Hollywood Agency UTA to Represent Bizarre Artists

The Beverly Hills-based United Talent Agency is known for representing celebrities like Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. But now they have launched a new division called UTA Fine Arts, which will manage the careers of visual artists.

What does this mean for the art world? It means massive increased exposure for the artist and mega bucks injected into visual art projects.

“To be placing a visual artist on the same page as a Depp or a Jolie, well, it’s really a game changer,” says Jeff Fincher, a gallery owner in the Culver City area of Los Angeles.

The real surprise is the artists that UTA Fine Arts is rumored to start representing. While no one is officially signed, Joshua Sloth from the agency said, “We are definitely going to avoid the so-called ‘best names in the industry’ and instead focus on non-industry artists as of course that tends to be the purest, most raw, most unique work that invokes actual feeling rather than play the phony name recognition angle which relies solely on hype.”

While the rumored artists are all very prolific and do have collectors, they definitely are not top tier art world established.

PINK FACE premiered with a solo show at Shasta Blitz in 2011, a pop up gallery in NYC. A Bansky like figure, his work deals with
constructionism and symbolic interactionism.

UTA Fine Arts has also recognized Internet-based artists across the web, and plans to play that hand to a significant degree.

Marc Glimcher states, “Do too much, and you’re just not cool anymore.” But that art world sentiment has been finally laid to rest, as the new breed of the internet artist has been all about working and producing. And this is exactly the kind of artist that UTA is after.

Also on the short list is Brad Troemel, an internet artist and Etsy seller, as well as a visual arts teacher at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute. His most well known work has focused primarily on temporal food sculptures.

Romantic Marshmellow Rose for Dad or Lover, Troemel 2014

A full list of artists UTA plans on managing should be released in the coming weeks. UTA will charge 15% to the represented artist for any art project that it initiates.