Berlin's New Art Fair; Cologne Eclipsed by Berlin?; Pagé Wins Art Cologne Prize; Schneider Seeks Someone to Die for Art
A TALE OF TWO ART FAIRS?
This fall, Berlin will be hosting not one but two art fairs. As the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung's Swantje Karich reports, the newest addition is called ABC—short for "Art Berlin Contemporary"—which will be held September 4–7 in a former post office at Gleisdreieck. One theme, fifty galleries, and one hundred thousand square feet of exhibition space are ABC's essential ingredients. The existing Art Forum Berlin fair—no relation to the magazine—recently pushed back its date from late September to November, opening a window for what appears to be a new competitor.
Yet ABC's founding director, Michael Neff—currently manager of the city's Gallery Weekend, which this year takes place May 2–4—insists that ABC is not a competing fair. "Our venture should in no way be understood as competition or an anti-event to Art Forum Berlin," Neff told the FAZ. "We are more interested in further developing a concept that I had already attempted in Frankfurt." Before heading the Gallery Weekend, Neff directed Fine Art Fair Frankfurt, which endured only two editions before it was canceled this spring; at that fair, each gallery exhibited one work created for a specific theme. Instead of traditional fair booths, ABC promises to engage visitors with "single projects, a specific selection, and few objects."
Despite Neff's insistence, Karich is not convinced that ABC can exist as a mere parallel event to Art Forum Berlin, especially since the new fair occurs a full two months before its predecessor. Will dealers and collectors be willing to make the trek to Berlin twice in one season? The creation of ABC seems to some a sign that negotiations broke down between Gallery Weekend, an "anti-fair" organized by a group of Berlin galleries, and Art Forum Berlin, which is run by the Messegesellschaft and supported by the city of Berlin.
In light of ABC, there may be a few changes on the way at Art Forum Berlin, whose artistic director is Sabrina van der Ley. "For 2009, there's talk of bringing in Eva-Maria Häusler, who worked with Sam Keller at Art Basel, as a new director," writes Karich. "The struggle over the site of the international art fair in Germany is far from over."
COLOGNE ECLIPSED BY BERLIN?
Last Wednesday's opening at Art Cologne may have seemed more like the beginning of the end to both visitors and exhibitors. In an editorial penned for Die Welt, Eckhard Fuhr speaks of Cologne's "cultural decline," which has been described in drastic terms by the city's own department of culture. Fuhr cites an interview with the municipal representative Georg Quander, who spoke at the fair's opening with the German art magazine Monopol about Cologne's losses to Berlin over the past fifteen years. "There's simply nothing that was done," Quander told Monopol. "Berlin had the ability just to roll right past us."
For Fuhr, Berlin's gains and Cologne's losses have nothing to do with Berlin's resumption of its capital status in a reunited Germany. "Other qualities of location were decisive in determining the migration of artists and galleries to Berlin, although internationalism stands high," writes Fuhr. "That should in fact trouble the Rhine—where one fancied that the world was closer than in other places in Germany—and not just in view of the art market. . . . The [German] West is threatened with becoming provincial in the cultural perception."
Writing in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Jörg Heiser is unequivocal. "Berlin is now Cologne," writes Heiser, describing the influx of galleries, not only from the former German art capital on the Rhine but also from abroad. One should not forget the spate of new galleries, such as LüttgenMeijer and Sommer & Kohl, just launched by former Berlin gallery assistants. And then there's the growing group of private collectors, from pioneer Erika Hoffmann to relative newcomer Christian Boros, who have decided to exhibit their treasures through private foundations.
According to Heiser, it's becoming difficult even for professionals to have an overview of the city's contemporary art scene. "In Berlin, every week, at least one new gallery joins the estimated four hundred already here," writes Heiser. "In New York, there are supposedly five hundred galleries." Despite having opened a Berlin branch in 2002, Cologne dealer Christian Nagel continues to insist that Berlin does not have sufficient capital to financially support so many newcomers, although such fears don't keep anyone away. The deciding factor is not money: It seems as though some artists prefer to exhibit in Berlin, especially in light of the city's growing international audience. "How much can Berlin take?" asks Heiser, adding that art needs to be not only sold but also discussed. For many galleries and collectors, the move to Berlin may end up in a search for informed viewers.
SUZANNE PAGÉ WINS ART COLOGNE PRIZE
The Frankfurter Rundschau reports that Suzanne Pagé, director of the Fondation Louis-Vuitton Pour la Création in Paris, has been awarded the Art Cologne Prize. The fair administration, Kölnmesse, along with the German federal association of galleries and editions, praised Pagé "for her outstanding achievement as a mediator of the classics from modern and contemporary art." Until 2006, Pagé was director of the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. In the course of her almost-twenty-year term at the ARC, Pagé managed to give the museum "its own identity." The prize comes with sixteen thousand dollars.
GREGOR SCHNEIDER SEEKS SOMEONE WILLING TO DIE FOR ART
Never one to shy away from controversy, the artist Gregor Schneider has begun a search for someone willing to die as part of a performance. “I want to display a person dying naturally in the piece or somebody who has just died,” he told the Art Newspaper's Gareth Harris. “My aim is to show the beauty of death.” Schneider has noted his desire to stage the performance at the Haus Lange museum in Krefeld, Germany, also saying that if the museum refuses, he will stage the performance in a studio space in his hometown of Rheydt, also in Germany. The museum declined to comment.