Less than a year after leaving the traditional brick and mortar gallery world for online auction house Paddle8, Charlie Manzo is going back to his roots: He will join New York’s Metro Pictures, allegedly as a co-director, although his title has not been confirmed.
In August of last year, Manzo joined Paddle8 as a senior specialist following an almost three year stint at Gagosian. Before that, he had spent about 10 years at Pace Gallery, working his way up from an intern to an assistant director and artist representative.
At Paddle8, Manzo focused on private sales and curating auctions. In a recent interview, Manzo told Leslie Rankow that he had made the transition to an online art-selling venue because “I want to fuse the principles of traditional galleries with the technology that we experience online.”
However, Manzo did admit to some uncertainty about the online platform, saying “while I was very curious about the potential of the online art market, I was still unconvinced of its abilities, so I wanted to try it out first hand.” This latest move suggests that Manzo, having tested both markets, still believes that the brick-and-mortar model is superior.