1. Do art fairs represent a risk and pain for you or rather do they play a key role in your survival and success?
2. Do you believe that art fairs have become an onerous business for you and your colleagues?
3. Is today’s gallerist crushed amid the auctions and the art fairs? How do you defend yourself against these ‘giants’?
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ELLEN DE BRUIJNE
Ellen De Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam
1. I would obtain a defi nition of the art fair as risky survival and painful success. I thought about it around a thousand times how to avoid the improvised circus-act I am performing on the fairs. But I’m so far without any practical or satisfying outcome. You can imagine a more exhibition-likefair, but it would be more expensive and less profitable, and in this economical climate less desirable. You can imagine to stay home and save your money. And I would advise well known galleries in the big art cities to do so. But smaller galleries in the periphery cities will be cut off from their network, dead and forgotten within two years.
2. As far as I know, in the gallery-business you have to work for your money, and that’s
always hard, especially in an economical recession. But we all saw it coming, and instead of protecting the art world we profited from ‘the bubble’ and now we are complaining the hardest. I don’t think it is the art fair in itself that makes it hard. It is due to the only system that’s left — capitalism — that is creating the ongoing ups and downs.
3. Although auctions and art fairs are functioning in the same (art) system, I do not see them as the same kind of entities. For me the art fair is still a vehicle to open up the gallery and reach more people than when staying at home. I pay them for this possibility, that’s the deal. On the other hand, I have no relation with auction houses. They own a couple of galleries to play thegame in an even more sublime way. But the play is about money, not art. They represent ‘the other side’ and as far as I’m concerned the cause of all the trouble in forcing the prices towards an abstract level. There is no protection for a gallery, only hold your breast and hope the auction houses shut up a bit during their implosion.
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BART and GERALD DEWEER
Deweer Gallery, Otegem, Belgium
1. Art fairs do indeed play a key role in our gallery’s policy. Deweer Gallery is not located in a city but in the countryside. In order to present the gallery’s program and artists we need to go to places and events where we can meet the private, corporate and institutional public. Art fairs are such places.
2. We believe that art fairs may indeed have become a burden for some of our colleagues who cannot afford not to participate at the fairs they used to participate at. As far as Deweer Gallery
is concerned, we want to grow on the international market and some of the top international fairs are still on our list of desiderata.
3. We do not consider art fairs and auctions a prior threat. We concentrate on our core business which is to promote as a primary gallery in Belgium and abroad the artists of the gallery.
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VOLKER DIEHL
Galerie Volker Diehl, Berlin
1. Despite of the organizational and financial burden, art fairs do play an important role in the art business. Art fairs are an important platform for presenting gallery artists and also for making new contacts and strenghtening existing contacts.
2. In a more and more global world, good art fairs are important to make contacts in countries which are new on the art map. Participating in art fairs should be a strategic decision. If the selection is done carefully and the gallerist choses a couple of good fairs instead of too many mediocre ones, the fairs shouldn’t become too much of a burden.
3. Auctions and art fairs are not a big threat to galleries. The most important work, which is working with young artists and fostering their career on a long term basis, is still done in the galleries. Art fairs are an additional platform. Auction houses need galleries to fi rst create a market for an artist and, especially in crisis times, protect the stability of the artists market.
Auction results can help to determine the market value of artists, but often prices reached at auction are misleading, which can be damaging for the artists.
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GERD HARRY LYBKE
Galerie Eigen + Art, Leipzig/Berlin
1/2. We see art fairs as an instrument to support the topical concerns of our artists. We have a long-term concept for all fairs and consider greatly which fairs we participate in. At Art Forum inBerlin we always present our artists and their work in a thematic context. At Frieze Art Fair we have presented our artists with solo exhibitions for many years now, because notably in Londoncurators and members of international museums perceive the artistic positions at the art fair. InMiami, on the other hand, we display the whole spectrum of our gallery to make the works accessible not only to American but also Latin-American collectors. We exhibit concise solo exhibitions at the Armory Show because of the intense ramifi cations of museums and institutions in New York. Basel can be seen as a kind of analysis of the last year and we try to show the most important positions of all our artists.
3. Auctions don’t belong to these instruments that we use at a gallery, because they serve a
market that works contrariwise to our market sector. Since we work long-term orientated and continuously with our artists, we are much closer to their work and concentrate much more on placement and communication than auction houses can ever accomplish.
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ROUPEN and ARSEN KALFAYAN
Kalfayan Galleries, Athens/Thessaloniki
1. Participation in art fairs has furthered our international contacts and we have expanded our client base. The fairs do not necessarily play a key role in our survival; however, they are an important means of promoting our artists beyond the Greek market.
2. Participating at art fairs is time-consuming in terms of preparing applications and organizing the transportation, booth set-up, press contacts, etc. But of course, the upside of this is that the fairs provide an opportunity to promote our artists and expand our contacts in the international art market.
3. As a gallery, we do not feel threatened by the auction houses, which represent the secondary market or the art fairs which have a different function. Building long-lasting personal relationships with clients as well as supporting and promoting its artists are a gallery’s guarantee of success.
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GEORG KARGL
Galerie Georg Kargl, Vienna
1. Art fairs play a key role in being globally recognized, showing your approach and the way you are working and the groups of artists you are representing. It is also a special way to point out the aesthetics of the gallery and its program. The art fairs are part of the result of one year’s achievements.
2. Art fairs have always been an onerous business regarding the outcome of the effort put in, but they are, as people know, part of the success and the belief of art people. They are meant to be an introduction to a lot of people in foreign countries and refl ect your way of working at your home base.
3. The most important part is to be attentive to the new and stand up for elaborate and wellinstalled exhibitions in your gallery in order to feed the ground of thoughts and intellectual
exchange for developing art.
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NINA MENOCAL
GalerÃa Nina Menocal, Mexico City
1. About the fairs: a great passion in the case of Art Forum Berlin, I love the fair and the city. At Pulse Miami the sales have been fantastic, in that sexy city. Pulse New York, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere, and we made it.
2. Art fairs are not onerous but an honour. I have always wanted to participate in Art Brussels, but have had to cancel fi ve times because of schedule problems; it will be an honour to participate in the future.
3. About the auctions: I ignore them.
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JANELLE REIRING
Co-owner, Metro Pictures, New York
1/2. Neither of these extremes are relevant. I guess in this ‘new’ market we are in there is acertain amount of economic risk, but certainly no pain. I have heard stories that artists have
left their gallery because it was not admitted to Basel, but, since one advantage of being an
‘established’ gallery is that you can get into any art fair, I have no fi rst-hand knowledge of the
intense competition for admittance. I can see cutting down on the number of fairs we do (now
about four a year).
3. I don’t look at it as an adversarial relationship. Art fairs need galleries to survive, and galleries
will participate in art fairs that provide networking opportunities and sales. The contemporary
departments of auction houses are dependent on galleries to garner reputations and demand
for contemporary artists’ work; and galleries benefi t from the larger audience and excitement
created by the auction houses. Of course from the dealer’s point of view, auction houses create
market excesses and have no interest in the artist’s long-term career, but I think as long as
dealers and artists are aware of this, it makes more sense to try and work with them.
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CHRISTIAN MEYER and RENATE KAINER
Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna
1. Our gallery has always been geared more toward gallery shows rather than toward art fair participation. This allows us to work more specifi cally with the artists and means that there is a more comprehensive and better selection available to collectors than would be possible at a fair.Participation in fairs primarily serves an informational and representative purpose.
2. The global fairs such as Basel and Frieze will not disappear (even if the art world wishes it were so), because they are the logical substrate of a market economy based on uprooting, media dependency and the general dominance of fi nance. For art, this means a no longer negligible signifi cance of global networking strategies, as well as the dominance of the supermarket principle, and the acceptance of the supremacy of a culture of events and spectacle.
3. It seems evident that large-scale exhibitions and their curators are, in an increasingly
ostentatious manner, making choices different than those of the collectors’ market reflected in the global fairs and auction houses. As a result, local work, as well as local events such as exhibitions and biennials, will become more important for the art scene and will create a new concept of locality.
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EMMANUEL PERROTIN
Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris
1. Art fairs are everything at the same time. It is very important for a gallery to promote less famous artists during an artfair. It is also a priviledged moment to meet with worldwide collectors.
2. The uncertain situation in which we are living now will push galleries to participate in less artfairs. A gallery like mine took part in 6 fairs in 2007 and the same in 2008. In my opinion, it is extremely important that a group of gallerists decides which are the three most important artfairs that we want to keep powerful in the future.
3. Galleries cannot be crushed by the fairs, because they are participating in the fairs. For the galleries that have no access to some fairs, their benefi t is of course not the same. If there are too many art fairs, like for example in Miami for the past few years, the result can only be an indigestion. Regarding the auctions, the recent results were somehow positive, as 60% of the artworks were sold to real passionnates, who will not resell their works in the next 6 months. Wehope that these auction houses will organize less sales and that they will spend more time
on one specifi c sales event. Also, I hope that the auction houses will now mention the same estimation price as the price found in a gallery and double it or triple it as it happened. A gallery like mine, which works directly with artists, often lost the benefi t of the secondary market. Collectors prefering to sell their works at auction. They might now prefer to come back to the galleries.
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