Galerie Marguo is a contemporary art gallery with a distinctive focus on international and diasporic artists. In 2020, the gallery opened its doors in the heart of the Marais district in Paris, with a commitment to nurturing a plurality of voices and perspectives at a time when freedom of movement was greatly circumscribed. Founded by Vanessa Guo and Jean-Mathieu Martini, Marguo organically extended from the unlikely convergence of differing tastes, cultural references, and backgrounds that characterized the pairs’ own relationship. An experiment in hybridity and contradictions, the Marguo project situates itself across and between local, global, and digital contexts, with the aim of creating heterotopic and discursive spaces. Moreover, it is guided by Guo and Martini’s belief in the inextricable nature of art and life, which is evidenced by a multifaceted engagement in the arts and hospitality that privileges relationships and people.
Marguo centers emerging and early-career artists from all corners of the globe, notably from contexts beyond the mainstream commercial hubs of the art world, and is proud to have offered many artists their first exhibitions in France or Europe. Beyond Paris, its international presence and relationships with institutions and brands have paved the way to important partnerships and exhibitions devoted to gallery artists in museums, private institutions, and collections across North America, Europe, and Asia. Likewise, Marguo places a strong emphasis on digital and traditional media and communications to reach global audiences. In line with its values of accessibility and education, the gallery produces in-depth video portraits of its artists, offering thoughtful behind-the-scenes looks at their practices. Marguo Books, the gallery’s imprint, creates scholarship and lasting records of artists’ work through the publication of exhibition catalogs and artist books featuring artists’ writings and commissioned essays.
Alongside a dynamic program of exhibitions, off-site projects, and regular participation in art fairs such as Art Paris, Asia Now, Art021 Shanghai, and Kiaf Seoul, Marguo launched Casa Marguo, an artist residency and salon nestled within a traditional townhouse in Mahon, Menorca, in July 2023. A seasonal site, Casa Marguo invites a slower and more intimate domestic environment for artists and visitors to forge new connections and ways of engaging with contemporary artistic production. In early 2024, Marguo will launch Bar Saka, an experimental craft cocktail bar that celebrates the art of refined simplicity in collaboration with master mixologist Frédéric Paolini. A stone’s throw from the Parisian gallery on Rue des Minimes, Bar Saka further stretches the conceptual boundaries of what a gallery can be, blurring the distinctions between various forms of sensory and cultural experiences. Whatever forms Marguo takes, its ethos remains the same: a dedication to living artists, and an unwavering belief in art’s potential to foster new forms of human connection and ways of being in the world.
