Who is Art Arcanum?
Art Arcanum was established by Professor Richard Wearn in 2022. From Aotearoa/New Zealand, Richard lives in Los Angeles, where he is faculty at California State University, Los Angeles (2005). He also resides in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He received degrees in Fine Arts from the University of Auckland, Elam School of Art, BFA (1993) and the University of Southern California MFA (1996), Richard has lectured at prestigious institutions including The Royal College of Art London, La Esmeralda, Mexico City, The National Taiwan University for the Arts, and the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing.
Richard has received grants and awards for projects undertaken for USC, The Chinati Foundation, The New Zealand Arts Council, The Headlands Center for the Arts, The New Zealand Foreign Affairs Ministry, and recently The Sir Henry Moore Institute and The Alberto Burri Foundation. His artworks have been exhibited at leading art spaces including The Chinati/Donald Judd Foundation Marfa, Texas; Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center; Headlands, San Francisco; The National Center for the Arts Mexico City; Hillary Crisp Gallery London; Amsterdam Center for Visual Art, Michael Lett Gallery, Auckland, Art Formosa, Art Taipei, Shanghai International Art Fair, and Art Miami. Richard has worked in the commercial and non-profit sectors of Contemporary Art: Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Blum and Poe Gallery Santa Monica, and Patricia Marshall Fine Arts, Los Angeles. In 2006 he co-produced Banksy’s Barely Legal Los Angeles, Street Art’s entry into the market, bridging early social media, sub-cultural networks, and mainstream media. In 2023 Richard curated ‘Crypto Art A New Possibility’ at the Central Academy of Fine Art Museum in China, the most comprehensive crypto art exhibition to date.
As Art Arcanum, he provides advisory and curatorial services for private art collectors, corporate entities, and Institutions. Richard’s studio, curatorial, and writing practices have produced a perspective that is valued by collectors. Richard understands Art within its societal context and through our ‘sensibility’. The cultural operations that place value and importance upon art, and thus incentivize investment, makes up the total functioning of the art market. It is both typically historical and simultaneously informed by the atypical present: cultural shifts; political identifications; technological advances and failings; and insider trading are all “atypical” elements of the market that are complex and influential.
