The past five years have seen, as Ben Brown suggests, a steady stream of international galleries opening in Mayfair. Larry Gagosian started the trend of American galleries moving here, opening Gagosian on Davies Street in 2004, followed by Pace Gallery and David Zwirner in 2012, and Marian Goodman in 2014. Other newbies include Hauser & Wirth, Kallos Gallery, Haunch of Venison and Omer Tiroche Contemporary Art.
Angela Choon, director of David Zwirner London, had been working with David for 20 years before making the jump from the US to Mayfair. "It was time to look for something in Europe and pretty soon we realised London was the place. We were very clear from the start that it had to be in Mayfair, just because the art market is very international and when people do come from outside the UK, they come to this area. I feel like we've influenced a lot of other galleries to think about moving further afield, not just on the traditional Cork Street/Albemarle Street area," she tells me.
The gallery is currently showing an exhibition of new works by Belgian artist Luc Tuymans, with whom the gallery first opened. "It was very important to open our London gallery with an artist whose career has been simultaneous with the gallery's growth," Angela explains. His new show has been made specifically for the Grafton Street space. Quiet, restrained and at times unsettling, his works engage equally with questions of history and its representation as with quotidian subject matter cast in unfamiliar and eerie light. Painted from pre-existing imagery, they often appear slightly out of focus and sparsely coloured, like third-degree abstractions from reality.
Working in the art world for 20 years, what has Angela seen change? "Not only the expansion of art galleries, but also the art world. David opened the gallery in a recession in the early 1990s, and you grow and grow with the artists' work and you see them become successful. That has been really wonderful to see."