Seen

Download Avant Arte's New Generation Report: https://avantarte.com/insights/articles/new-generation-survey-2026
This year’s findings show that younger collectors are becoming an increasingly active economic and philanthropic force, spending meaningfully on artworks, visiting museums frequently, and demonstrating a growing appetite to financially support institutions.

Mazdak Sanii didn't grow up in the art world. He grew up practicing French horn six hours a day, writing his dissertation on Derrida, and eventually co-founding Boiler Room - the live music platform that brought intimate underground gigs to millions of global viewers. So how did he end up as the CEO of Avant Arte, one of the most consequential platforms in contemporary art today?
In this episode, Mazdak walks us through the eight-year journey of building a platform that has now worked with 250 artists on 750 projects — from Anish Kapoor's first silkscreen print to Tschabalala Self's first public sculpture in London. We talk about the merger with fine art print studio Make-Ready, the mission to bring first-time buyers into the art market (40% of their LACMA x Ed Ruscha buyers had never collected before), and what it actually means to be a "creative marketplace" rather than a gallery, a tech startup, or a hype machine.
This is a conversation about access without dilution, culture without gatekeeping, and why the most interesting thing happening in the art world right now might be the thing you haven't heard of yet.
Explore Avant Arte's collaborations: https://avantarte.com/
Thanks for listening to this episode of the Seen podcast.
Liked what you heard? Get early access to these episodes and a ton of other great art content by becoming a member of Seen at seen.art.
If you want to connect with us between episodes, follow us on Instagram, @watchseenart.
About Behind The Seen
The Behind The Seen Series brings on art world professionals of all sorts to give you insight into what the art world is really like. Curious what it’s like being a gallerist, an art critic or a curator? Then this series is for you.

Jonathan Schwartz is the founder of Atelier 4, one of the most trusted names in art handling and shipping worldwide. But his entry into the business was less than auspicious - he answered an ad to drive art cross-country despite not really being a driver, worked for what he calls "a pirate outfit," and came home from vacation to find maggots in the sink.
That was 36 years ago.
Since founding Atelier 4 in 1989, Jonathan has built a company known for handling the art world's most precious and challenging works - from Kerry James Marshall paintings he installed in the '90s to the Magna Carta itself.
Carrie and Jonathan talks about the Olympic-level logistics of art handling, why the name Atelier 4 is partly a joke about art world pretension, what happens when artwork components suddenly appear on endangered species lists, and why his favorite art handlers don't necessarily love art - they just need good hand-eye coordination and solid work ethic.
This conversation pulls back the curtain on the invisible infrastructure that keeps the art world moving, told by someone who's done everything from cutting stretcher bars to navigating international customs law, and who somehow maintains both deep reverence for the work and a healthy sense of absurdity about the whole enterprise.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Seen podcast.
Liked what you heard? Get early access to these episodes and a ton of other great art content by becoming a member of Seen at seen.art.
If you want to connect with us between episodes, follow us on Instagram, @watchseenart.
About Behind The Seen
The Behind The Seen Series brings on art world professionals of all sorts to give you insight into what the art world is really like. Curious what it’s like being a gallerist, an art critic or a curator? Then this series is for you.

What does a room reveal about the life lived inside it? For painter Lottie Cole, the answer is: everything.
Lottie joins Carrie to talk about her new show at Long & Ryle Gallery in London - an exhibition of interiors inspired by Anglo-Irish novelist Elizabeth Bowen, whose famous family home, Bowen's Court, was sold and demolished by a farmer who wanted only its timber. The story of that house - and Bowen's relationship to it - became the beating heart of a new body of work that asks what we inherit, what we lose, and what stays with us long after the walls come down.
Along the way, Lottie talks about painting Bloomsbury interiors at Monk's House and Charleston Farmhouse; the auction house catalogues full of men and the women painters who deserved to be in them; a lifelong compulsion to move house that's apparently genetic; the novel you should read before you see the show; and why, when you finally arrive at a writer's grave for a moment of profound connection, sometimes there are just six men with strimmers.
Lottie Cole's show opens 3rd June at Long & Ryle, London: https://longandryle.com/exhibitions/151/works/
Read: The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/16816/9780099276470
Join our mailing list: https://mailchi.mp/seen/waitlist⁠
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About the Have You Seen? series:
The ⁠Have You Seen? Series⁠ is all about talking to emerging and mid-career artists about their journey to now.
Curious about how an artist got to where they are or indeed why they chose art in the first place? Then this series is for you. Join us as we speak to emerging and mid-career artists across the globe. Don’t worry, there’s no hiding behind art speak here, or pretending that being an artist is a bowl of cherries. We’re here to hear it all, straight from the source.

Carrie Scott sits down with conceptual artist Phillip Toledano to unpack his most audacious project yet - a show at Fotografiska Berlin attributed to a photographer who doesn't exist. We get into AI, historical surrealism, the death of photographic truth, and why his most provocative work is also his most personal.

Explore Phillip's work: https://mrtoledano.com/
Join our mailing list: https://mailchi.mp/seen/waitlist⁠
Follow us on Instagram:⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠https://www.instagram.com/watchseenart⁠
About the Have You Seen? series:
The ⁠Have You Seen? Series⁠ is all about talking to emerging and mid-career artists about their journey to now.
Curious about how an artist got to where they are or indeed why they chose art in the first place? Then this series is for you. Join us as we speak to emerging and mid-career artists across the globe. Don’t worry, there’s no hiding behind art speak here, or pretending that being an artist is a bowl of cherries. We’re here to hear it all, straight from the source.

Painter Suzy Spence spent 35 years making work in New York before trading the city for a sprawling Vermont studio - and she never stopped being radical. In this conversation, we dig into her summer show at the Bundy Museum, the feminist politics woven into equestrian imagery, and why the best paintings should be, in her words, hopefully indescribable.

Explore Suzy's work: https://suzyspence.com/
Join our free art newsletter:⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://mailchi.mp/seen/waitlist⁠⁠
If you want to connect with us between episodes, follow us on Instagram:⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/watchseenart⁠⁠
About the Have You Seen? series:
The ⁠Have You Seen? Series⁠ is all about talking to emerging and mid-career artists about their journey to now.
Curious about how an artist got to where they are or indeed why they chose art in the first place? Then this series is for you. Join us as we speak to emerging and mid-career artists across the globe. Don’t worry, there’s no hiding behind art speak here, or pretending that being an artist is a bowl of cherries. We’re here to hear it all, straight from the source.