It is a family heritage. My mother is a sculptress, and a large part of my maternal family are artists. I grew up in studios, surrounded by creations, unique personalities and beautiful things, assuming that art was part of everyday life.

I followed a classic route, business school, then an investment bank. But in 2015, several factors coincided: I was then assisting a company in the craftsmanship sector, I lived in Saint-Germain-des-Prés and saw galleries closing, one after the other. I was still a passionate art-lover, but I felt that the market was split between a few major galleries, very powerful, and a multitude of small structures, often hardly visible. An intermediary space, livelier, more open, was missing.

It was more that I updated one of them… Great early 20th-century art-dealers welcomed people to their homes, their sitting-rooms, in a warm atmosphere: I wanted to bring this proximity back to centre-stage. With us, the exhibition does not impose itself on the visitor: it is the visitor who makes his/her own selection beforehand. We prepare a personalised display, making the experience much livelier.

New York hosts 90% of the American market, 50% of the market worldwide. It is an absolute must if you want to support artists ambitiously, and there was a long waiting-list. It is in Soho, on Mercer Street: it has a more open layout than in Paris, but the same philosophy favouring a warm welcome and dialogue.

Initially, I simply trusted my intuition. Today, I have formed a selection committee with an art critic and a big collector. We represent about 100 artists in all disciplines ‒ painting sculpture, ceramics, photography, textiles… I am particularly sensitive to materials, what’s known as the haptic effect: when a work appeals to you physically, you want to touch it.

That’s precisely the barrier I wanted to remove. We are there for the many people who have never acquired an artwork. The eye is a muscle: the more you look, the more finely-tuned your appreciation becomes. Each month, we organise an evening at the gallery called Apprendre à voir (Learn to see). We talk about the works, what we feel, without any jargon or complexes. There is no right answer, just a desire to learn how to listen to oneself.

The idea came from our visitors: some wanted to hire our premises for a dinner, a photo shoot, a birthday… We imagined places for living, in Paris and Provence, designed as collectors’ homes, with works installed in situ. You can spend a night, a week or several months there. And as our collectors return, we change the works exhibited to meet their wishes: it is another way of living with art.