Buried below the flying fish and banjo-plucking buskers at Pike Place Market, you’ll find Gallery ERGO, a contemporary art gallery that celebrates its fifth anniversary today.
What began as a shared artist studio in 2019 gradually shifted into a place for selling artists’ work, and eventually into a full-blown gallery operated and curated by Matt Midgley, who took over the space with his wife, Elaine Saly, to rescue it from obsolescence. Midgley is an accomplished artist in his own right: His acid-trippy, Escher-esque Op-Art confections are delicious to look at. Saly, a public defender and avid art lover, is his partner in the enterprise.
Because it’s in the market, ERGO has a slightly different feel from most galleries—no ivory tower, it’s down and dirty in the busy mix of crowds and vendors. It’s also unusual because it’s run by an artist: Midgley brings an artist’s eye and his personal network into the curatorial conversation, drawing artists from around the world to this sweet little spot tucked in a tourist maze. The work he curates has range, but you can count on encountering paintings and drawings with extreme, lush color and technical precision, leaning into street art, pop-surrealist-tinged painting, and hyperrealism, with some photography and sculpture as well. (ERGO is where I first encountered KSRA’s jaw-dropping miniatures.)
Today, ERGO is celebrating its five-year anniversary with a giant group show that features new work by more than 40 of its favorite artists, alongside a solo show of work by Berlin-based artist SNYDER. (The reception runs from 5-8 p.m., no RSVP necessary.) We asked Midgley a few questions about how he, an accidental gallerist, even got here.
You didn’t wake up one day and decide you’re going to be a gallery owner. How did you get here—what’s the ERGO lore?
MIDGLEY: Opening a gallery was never something I had plans to do or even imagined I would be doing. The day I decided to do it was, I believe, the same day the thought first entered my mind. I had joined a co-op artist studio space that my friend (and rad artist) Ariel Parrow was running in a shop space at Pike Place Market. I had just quit my previous day job, hoping to find something better for my happiness and general mental health. I decided to take what very small savings I had and pretend I was a full-time artist for a couple months before finding another job. Then, an opportunity came to me to take over the space, and the idea to make the shift from a studio space to a gallery was born.
You have a pretty distinct eye and taste. How do you know when something belongs at ERGO?
MIDGLEY: There isn’t really a set rubric or system, I just know what I like and what I find interesting or exciting! That changes over time, too, of course. I definitely have a fondness for artists who have really dialed in their particular approach.
Do you think of yourself as an artist who runs a gallery, or have you become a gallery owner who happens to be an artist? Is there a difference?
MIDGLEY: Between those two options—and based on my output over the last few years—I think it would land me squarely in the gallery-owner-who-happens-to-be-an-artist camp, but I don’t think the two really need to be ordered necessarily. I consider myself an artist and curator/gallery owner.
What’s the strangest conversation you’ve overheard in the gallery?
MIDGLEY: There’s so many people at Pike Place Market, you catch a snippet of something hilarious, curious, and/or insane pretty regularly. One thing I’ve noticed is how many people who frequent the market genuinely believe it to be haunted at night. Though that kind of thing I suppose just comes with the territory on a 119-year-old building!
Have you seen a ghost there?
MIDGLEY: I have not. I feel like believing in ghosts is probably a key factor in supposedly seeing them, and I don’t.
What’s one piece of advice about the art business you think is total bullshit?
MIDGLEY: I’m not sure it counts as advice, but I think the idea that you aren’t really a professional artist unless you’re doing it full time and living off it is totally bullshit. If you are lucky enough to get to focus on the arts and that’s working out for you enough to cover your bills, that’s awesome! But that’s just one path, and an unfortunately unlikely one for most of us. If you make art, you’re an artist.
What’s more, if you can find a day job that you don’t hate and that gives you some free time to make art without the need for that art to also pay your rent, sometimes that’s actually the better path. You can create without the stress associated with need for sales, and focus on things you really want to see out there in the world, regardless of whether there’s financial return on that investment. In my experience, some of the happiest working artists go this route.
What’s something you’ve learned about people by watching them look at art?
MIDGLEY: In my opinion, whether people know it or not, we’re all hungry for art that does something to us. Something that moves us, something that challenges us, something that makes us feel something. And people often seem surprised at which art does that to them! I think that, in this way, we learn new things about ourselves in the process.
