In a cost-cutting measure, Chelsea gallerist Zach Feuer has dropped eight artists from his roster, Bloomberg reports.

“I didn’t want to be big in this economy,” said Feuer. “Now is the time to have a lower overhead and be small and lean.”

Things were not always so for the 30-year-old dealer, who in 2000 launched his gallery with two partners in a small fourth-floor space on West 26th Street. Two years later, he moved to a ground-floor space on prestigious West 24th Street, home to such big-name dealers as Larry Gagosian, Mary Boone, and Barbara Gladstone, and in 2004, expanded again and bought out his partners.

“That’s how I thought the gallery should run: Bigger, bigger, bigger,” Feuer said.

Among the eight dropped artists are Tal R, Tom McGrath, Danica Phelps, Christoph Ruckhaberle, and Luis Gispert. The gallery will continue to represent Dana Schutz, Anton Henning, Jules de Balincourt, Nathalie Djurberg, Phoebe Washburn, Tamy Ben-Tor, Justin Lieberman, Dasha Shishkin, Johannes VanDerBeek, and Stuart Hawkins.

Feuer has also taken on a new artist, Mark Flood, and will show the work of Sister Corita Kent, a nun who died in 1986.

Feuer’s old roster was heavy on painters, while the pared-down group contains only three. “[I] wanted to make sure there were no redundancies, with two people covering the same area,” he said.

Feuer told his dropped artists about the changes in November and has been helping them ever since, alerting them to interested clients and curators, returning works in his inventory, and completing final sales.

Several artists have found new homes. McGrath will be represented by Sue Scott, while Gispert will complete a move to Mary Boone, with whom he has also worked since 2006.

The artists expressed mixed feelings about the change. Even Phelps, who admitted to being hurt, said, “It’s nice to have a clear ending rather than it fizzling out. Straightforward and honest is what I always admired in Zach.”