Angry Artists Want to Find Gallerist Tristian Koenig—and Make Him Pay

Lara Merrett, an Australian visual artist, first met art dealer and gallerist Tristian Koenig over 20 years ago, when he was on the board of an artist-run gallery in Melbourne called Bus.

“He was really charming, really enthusiastic and seemed to know lots of people,” Merrett, who’d submitted an exhibition idea and an installation work to the gallery, told The Daily Beast. “I’d see him at art fairs and I’d bump into him, but we didn’t really cross parts again until 2018, when he approached me and said, ‘Look, I’d really love to show your new work.’” What happened next would leave Merrett thousands of dollars out of pocket.

Koenig is currently the target of a growing number of incensed collaborators who say he duped them. Several Melbourne-based artists say they’ve had experiences with Koenig that much resemble Merrett’s, and now find themselves embroiled in protracted battles to make things right, a task made much more difficult due to the fact that Koenig has gone on the run, The Art Newspaper reported last week.

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Merrett hadn’t exhibited in Melbourne for a couple of years by the time she met Koenig, and thought a solo show at Koenig’s eponymous gallery sounded like a great idea.

“People had warned me about his erratic behavior and his ability to kind of explode, but I felt like I’d known him and had had some history and I was okay,” Merrett told The Daily Beast, adding that she’d grown quite used to dealing with eccentric personalities in the art world.

Initially, she was right: the solo show (“called ‘Lady Luck,’ ironically”), found several buyers, and Koenig promptly paid Merrett for her work. “He held onto some of the work that didn’t sell, but that’s pretty normal,” the artist said.

It was only later, when Merrett heard that Koenig was snapping up many more of her paintings from other galleries in Sydney and stockpiling them in his Melbourne store room, that she began to suspect something fishy was afoot.

“He did tell me of two works that had sold and I thought, ‘that’s great,’” Merrett told The Daily Beast. “But I would invoice him and he would never respond to those invoices or pay me. I realized I probably wasn’t going to get the money back for those works. I counted, and he had 17 works at this stage.”

Confused and upset, Merrett reached out to fellow artists on the scene in Australia and learned her experience with Koenig was far from unique: many others had been similarly lured in, only to be turned on and denied payment. The artist turned to her peers for help.

Merrett “had some friends in the art world basically turn up at his gallery with the list of 17 works. It was really extreme, but I didn’t know how else to get the work. He was quite nervous about that, and [some of] the work was in the gallery, so they put 12 works in the back of the truck and I got them back.”

Last December, Merrett told The Age that Koenig still refuses to give back the remaining five of her artworks worth $24,200, and that he also owes her $5,282 for a work of hers he sold that he refuses to fork over. (All figures quoted are in U.S. dollars.)

Merrett is far from alone. In 2016, during the early stages of his burgeoning career, painter Seth Birchall elected to work with Koenig when no one else would give him a shot, and quickly came to regret it: over the following four years, Birchall says he consigned 18 paintings in total to Koenig, three of which have currently been sold—the rest are unaccounted for.

The works Birchall made for Koenig are worth $80,000 in total, and the artist hasn’t been paid for any of them, according to The Age. “Every time I would complain about him, someone would say ‘he is pushing your work, he is getting your name out there,’” Birchall told The Age last December. “I was working by myself as an artist for so long and wasn’t recognized or given opportunities. Then along came Tristian. It is flattering. You let these things slide. Almost selling work is better than not selling work.”

With Birchall’s permission, Merrett forwarded email correspondence between Koenig and Birchall to The Daily Beast.

“Where have I been? I’ve been at my Mothers,” one email from Koenig to Birchall reads in part. “Listen to me—it is absolutely unnecessary to be rude and psychology [sic] abusive… don’t you dare threaten me. You should think really hard before sending such a message. I will deal with your shit soon. Period.”

“I’ve been locked down for 6 months all up, I’ve had major surgery and chemotherapy, I’m been [sic] watching my mum die and caring for her, I’m battling depression and anxiety, and I have zero support,” Koenig’s email to Birchall continues. “Pull your head in. I will deal with your shit, and I will not respond to any further messages. I will be in touch.”

“Your painting—what about it?” another email from Koenig to Birchall reads. “I’m hoping to have an inventory and everything consolidated to ship in a couple weeks. Mum has started voluntary assisted dying and is hoping to end her life by mid-next month. I’m spending my time with her right now, and getting my treatments sorted. Shit has been heavy down here for months Seth; well at least a year actually. As soon as everything is ready I will advise.”

Emerging creatives in any field will find that there are shrewd calculations to be made: either shake hands with a dubious insider in the hopes of leveling up, or risk languishing in a dreaded, but morally spotless, state of obscurity. Koenig took advantage of this dynamic, Merrett said.

“He’s a bully,” Merrett told The Daily Beast. “He’d put you down or find your Achilles heel or your doubt, and he’d really go there, which is just the most bizarre thing. There was no sense of apology.”

“You have been rude, immature and completely lacking in empathy or understanding in how the world works, which is perfectly in tune with the vanity of a young artist,” Tristian wrote to another artist in an email provided to The Daily Beast by Merrett. “I’m completely uninterested in placating the ego of a young artist who thinks he’s the center of the universe, when I have a parent dying and bigger fish to fry amongst the mountain of personal and work affairs which have… shut down for 7 of the last 8 months. You will receive notifications when you are paid and when works ship. Not before, and no [sic] after.”

When he wasn’t berating Merrett, Koenig was full of excuses. “He told me he had prostate cancer, which of course I was really sorry to hear, but at the same time I heard from another artist that he told her he had testicular cancer.”

Koenig, who’s also the previous co-owner of the Melbourne gallery Neon Parc, has reportedly used a patina of creative excuses over the years in order to duck the artists who’d trusted him to sell their work, The Age explained last year: when reached by artists asking where their money was, the dealer would claim he was bitten by a spider, injured in a cycling accident or otherwise put-upon by ailing relatives.

A Neon Parc employee reached by The Daily Beast for comment said he was “not interested” in participating in this story.

Art law expert Alana Kushnir is currently representing six artists who allege that Koenig either owes them money, needs to give their work back or both. In total, Kushnir’s clients are attempting to retrieve $27,000 they’re owed and 39 paintings of theirs that he handled. Since The Age first broke the story last year, 23 of the missing works have been recovered.

“I’m proud of my clients for speaking up about this matter,” Kushnir told The Art Newspaper. “Unfortunately, this is not a standalone occurrence in Australia, as in the art world globally. Most galleries here do the right thing and pay their artists. However, it is easy for bad conduct to fall through the cracks when there is a lack of industry-level accountability.” The Daily Beast reached out to Kushnir for comment.

In August, a warrant was issued for Koenig’s arrest after he failed to respond to a summons before the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court and the Victoria Police had failed to reach Koenig by phone. The Victoria Police were unavailable to comment to The Daily Beast.

Who exactly is Tristian Koenig?

On Koenig’s LinkedIn profile, after graduating from Melbourne’s La Trobe University in 1998 with Honors with a Bachelor’s of Arts in Art History, the time Merrett says he spent at Bus gallery is omitted: his first listed gig is his stint as Neon Pac’s Co-Director, a period that spanned from 2006 to 2010.

From 2010 to the present, Koenig’s LinkedIn says he’s been in charge of the Tristian Koenig gallery in Collingwood, Melbourne, the business that’s been connected to so many of the alleged rip-offs he’s being accused of participating in. The Daily Beast reached out to the gallery, and reached out to Koenig on what appears to be his personal Facebook page for comment.

“Former Neon Parc director Tristian Karl Koenig first started his art gallery in late 2013,” the site On the Grid explains. “A gallery punching well above its weight showcasing incredible artworks, each work displayed on beautifully white walls with ample natural light in this first-floor converted warehouse space.”

At one point, collectors bought work by the artist Jon Joanis from Koenig, but never received the paintings they paid for; the Melbourne court has issued default orders of $11,717 against the missing dealer.

In another instance, in 2017, Angela Westcott bought three works by the digital artist Petra Cortright from Koenig for the equivalent of $45,000, according to The Age. Koenig was then supposed to give 15 percent of the commission of the sale to dealer Stefan Simchowitz, who represents Cortright, but Simchowitz and the artist never received their cuts, he said.

“At one point, after years of chasing him, [Koenig said] ‘I’ve been struggling with cancer,’” Simchowitz told The Daily Beast. “I don’t know. Maybe he did. But instead of just picking up the phone and saying, ‘Hey, you know, financial pressure,’ there was no communication.”

In the art world, galleries struggling to follow through on agreed-upon deals is commonplace and generally dealt with amicably, Simchowitz explained. “We’ve had situations where we’ve had galleries owe us hundreds of thousands of dollars and can’t pay, and we put them on a payment plan,” he said. “We have payment plans going back five years. A thousand dollars a month, $2,000 a month, $500 a month, but communication is really key.”

In some instances, though, negotiations can quickly become toxic, Simchowitz said. “My experiences over the years, with some of the most reputable, smaller galleries, is I’ve seen some of the most disdainful behavior,” Simchowitz told The Daily Beast. “Gaslighting.”

Koenig “is definitely not the first nor the last person that will ever do this,” Merrett agreed. “The artist does seem to be at the bottom of the food chain, but I think what made this experience different is that now, people can get in touch easily with other people who’ve had a similar experience.”

Though many artists who say they’ve been duped by Koenig are fighting back, others have been completely demoralized, Merrett said. “They basically stopped making work after the experience with him because it was just so, so crushing,” she told The Daily Beast. “We just wanted to warn other artists, because he seems to have been doing this for so many years.”

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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