Alumni Series: Gary Yeh
Gary Yeh graduated from Duke in 2017, where he studied Art History and Economics and served as co-chair of Nasher MUSE. In 2015, he started the Instagram account @artdrunk, which has since garnered a following of over 94k. Upon graduation, Yeh worked in financial technology for nearly two years before committing to ArtDrunk full-time. He has since produced content at art galleries, fairs, and museums around the world. FORM’s Dani Yan sat down with Yeh to discuss his work, social media, and his new favorite country for art.
Dani Yan: Hi Gary, what are you working on?
Gary Yeh: I used to work in financial technology up until March of this year. I had @artdrunk on Instagram, which has been going on since I was a sophomore in college when I started it. It has always just been on Instagram, I didn’t think much of it until recently—six months ago—when I quit my job and really decided to do something larger with it. So now the idea with ArtDrunk is to build a production company as well as a media company that has the outward-facing brand of ArtDrunk. So what I mean by that is there is a lot of content that I believe the art world is lacking, specifically with video and to an extent, social media in general. There’s a lot of videos I’ve been seeing, on YouTube for example, that I really and love and I think would transfer really well the the art world that I’ve been trying to produce for my own brand. To help fund that, I work with clients that are mainly galleries and some museums to produce video for them because they have started to pick up that they need to do that to engage a younger audience.
D: It’s a pretty big step to start a job and then quit fairly shortly after. What caused you to make the decision to commit to art full-time?
G: I got paid for the first time for ArtDrunk about a year and a half ago. It was $200 for just posting a picture. And it was such a small amount but it really flipped the switch—maybe I could monetize this thing and push it beyond just a hobby. My goal at the time was to quit my job at the end of the year, 2018, and it took much longer than that, or at least a few extra months and a lot more planning to develop more of a business model and to extend into a production company alongside building a brand. I enjoyed my job in fintech but it was really uninteresting stuff, I liked the job and I liked the team but I spent all my time doing art things, so that was what I knew I wanted to do. Now making the leap, I think I sleep less, I make less money, but I’m much happier. It's shocking how big of a difference it's been being fully engaged every moment, knowing that it's something I’m passionate about and knowing that it’s something I’m trying to build. There’s a certain ownership that comes with it that feels much better than just working for a company.
D: A lot of Duke students know pretty early what they want to do. During college, did you think you were going to work in art eventually?
G: I honestly didn’t want to work in art at all. I was definitely in the whole: get into Duke, get an Econ or Public Policy major, work in finance or consulting. I didn’t land any of those jobs, which is why I ended up in a sort of a mix with fintech. One of my main goals in life was to collect art. And to collect art, you need money and a lot of it. I think naturally, that’s why I was led down the path of finance and consulting. I saw a future of a standard career path, becoming a partner somewhere. In art, it's very difficult to make money in the industry unless you’re at the very top. And even then, I still hear a lot of jaded people. I think the switch really came when I wanted to immerse myself fully in the industry. My priorities have shifted a little bit where I don’t need to collect or acquire—being involved is fulfilling enough for me.
D: Let’s talk more about ArtDrunk—you mentioned a lack of video content in the art world. Could you elaborate on that?
G: The thing that’s always confused me is that the art world is founded on visual art and there just hasn’t been that great of video content. If you look on YouTube, there are some institutions like the Tate or the Met or the MoMA that have pretty good videos, but these are massive institutions whose missions and visions are about education. So they’re willing to spend the money on video because it’s not meant to drive sales. For galleries, it’s a much harder pitch, because how is spending $20,000 on video going to help sell more artwork—it may or may not. But I think galleries are starting to catch on. The videos I see on YouTube and especially Instagram receive a lot higher engagement than photos. There’s still very little of the commercial side of the art world that has adopted video, only the major players who have the money to invest in it. My vision is trying to spread that, make video production cheaper so more galleries can get involved and spread their programs to more people around the world.
D: I’ve definitely noticed that, too. When I was first getting into art, I would try to look up videos online and I could never find that many. So you mentioned social media—something you use every day—there’s a lot of discussion about social media’s impact in general, but I wanted to ask you about how you view its impact on art specifically.
G: The net effect is overwhelmingly positive in that it has made art much more accessible. Again, by the nature of visual art being visual. I know so many artists who have made careers because of Instagram. So many galleries have developed relationships with collectors and people new to art through Instagram. I certainly wouldn’t be here if not for Instagram either. It was changed the art world so much in that way.
I think the negative side of is—because of how much Instagram is used, and somewhat in a superficial way—it overstautates people with images that makes the art viewing experience less genuine. Even me, I’m scrolling through Instagram and I’m seeing hundreds or even thousands of images a day, spending less than a second on each one unless it's something that really catches my eye and causes me to want to learn more about it. I think that relationship with art has changed. People are exposed to art more broadly and it may funnel into them seeing more art in person, but I know so many people who say they’ve seen something on Instagram and just forgot about seeing it in person because they don’t need to. So there’s the negative of your relationship with art becoming so digital that you forget about the full experience that the art was really meant for.
D: You’re interacting with art every day; what art have you been most interested in recently?
G: I’ve been spending a lot of time in Korea recently—I went for the first time in April and I’m going back for the fifth time this year next week. Never in a million years would I have guessed I’d be spending that much time there. I’m Tawainese, so I don’t speak a lick of Korean except for hello and thank you. What has truly floored me is how fascinating the scene is and how fascinating it will become. People always talk about Hong Kong as the art center of Asia, and that is the objective truth based on where Western galleries are opening up shop, but I think their programs are not that different from their programs in their Western spaces. So it's just an outpost in Asia to cater to their Asian clients. Whereas in Seoul, there are a couple of Western galleries that have opened up, but what is more interesting are the local galleries which have a long history of promoting international art within Korea and promoting Korean art internationally. And that, I don’t see in a lot of other cities. If you think Asia, there’s certainly Hong Kong and Tokyo—when I went to Tokyo, I felt that it was really closed off and I didn’t feel there was much interest in the balance between Japanese and international art. More broadly speaking, the Korean culture is kind of trending with Korean food and K-pop—even the film that won at Cannes was a Korean film. There’s so much interest in Korean culture now that I think it’s the right time to be in Korea.
D: I didn’t really consider Korea as a place to watch for art, so it’s cool to hear that perspective. We touched on this a bit earlier, but as a closing question: what personal project are you most excited about?
G: As an extension of talking about Korea, I’m filming a documentary in Korea next year. It’s on an 86-year-old artist Ha Chong-Hyun. He’s one of my favorite artists, obviously now more than ever. The reason I went to Korea in April was to visit his studio, and that led to the discussion with his gallery. This guy is a true artist; he paints all the time—any time he has, he just paints. He doesn’t really write, he doesn’t really draw, he just paints. There’s really little archival material on him, and he’s not going to be around forever. Obviously his legacy is already in his work, but his gallery wanted to do something bigger to preserve his life and what he’s done. I’m actually working with one of my friends from Duke who graduated the same year as me—he took creative writing classes and has always been interested in film and storytelling, so I asked him to come along and he’s really nailed down the storytelling aspect. Working together, my focus is more on the aesthetics and how it’s going to be shot while producing it and hopefully bringing it to film festivals.
