Round table. MARKETING CONTEMPORARY ART
SUR*VIVER round table at U3 – Triennial of Slovenian Contemporary Art
22 February 2007, Moderna Galerija
Participants:
Christine König, gallerist – Christine König Galerie, Vienna
Alenka Gregorič, curator and gallerist – Galerija ŠKUC, Ljubljana
Lukazs Gorczyca, gallerist – Raster Gallery, Warzsawa
Gregor Podnar, gallerist – Gregor Podnar Gallery, Ljubljana
Miran Mohar, artist – Irwin, Slovenia
Miha Horvat, artist – son:DA, Maribor, artist
Moderator: Tina Smrekar, artist
Tina Smrekar: The round table is part of SUR*VIVER project, which is a travelling research/exhibitve/discursive project focused on different aspects of survival of artists. In the framework of this project and U3 we also today started a 3-day workshop on founding and managing a commercial gallery, lead by Łukazs Gorczyca. The theme of today is the contemporary art market, commercial galleries in the local and international context, their influence on current production and to what extent can this be a source of income for the artists. To start with Christine – your gallery was founded in 1989 so you have been commercially active for more than 15 years. Most of the works presented at the gallery are produced especially for the gallery, ist space and its role in society. You also invite other galleries to present their positions, last September for example Lokal 30, a young gallery from Warzsawa, and you also cooperated with Vienna Academy in the video-window, where videos of students where running in the street window of the gallery in the nights. In 2006 season you organised so called Saturday Lunch lectures where artists, curators, gallerists,architects and philosophers were invited to speak about their work. What do you feel is the situation in the art market – is any of the branches hyped or overlooked? Does painting sell best in the art market, is there a new media or installation market, a conceptual art or video or documentation of performances markets?
Christine König: This is a very complicated question and you asked so many questions. But to answer the last one: there is not one single art market. And the most important one certainly still is the American one. It is true that certain trends or even brands often are being made by the American art market, sometimes the reputation of a certain art or artist is being made by gallerists and also critics and collectors, they altogether form a hype. But these hypes are different in every country. There are hypes but I’m not sure how they are born, someone starts and then everbody goes after it but after a few years the validity of an artist is clearly shown.
Tina Smrekar: You state in the presentation text off your gallery you produce works especially for the gallery. How do you market these works produced especially for the gallery space? Do you present the same pieces in the gallery and in artfairs or are these different types of work?
Christine König: We try to show it at Art Unlimited in Basel or at art fairs afterwards or we make photographs and documuntation and offer it to collections where we think it could interest them. But we have a huge magazine, where we have to store works. So, we put a lot of money into production with no immediate success, no immediate return.
When I started in 1989, the art market was at a very low point and I was not in a very fortunate situation, since I grew up with the old masters - Herman Nitsch, Arnulf Rainer – this was not my generation, it was my father’s generation. I did not understand that I should have started with my contemporanians but I was not befriended with them and it is extremely important when you start a gallery that you start with artists of your own age and generation. If you do that, you don’t need any money, you just take any garage or cellar and you start. But I, at my age and the life I had before, I just had to be immediately in the artworld, I had to take a lot of money to my hands to show that I am here (*show my presence).
Tina Smrekar: Łukazs, Raster gallery is an private gallery for contemporary art, specialized in (mostly young) polish artists. You are also very active in the local art and artist scene – you have informal meetings and social gatherings with artists, last summer you organized a larger project in an old villa in Warzsawa where you invited some other galleries to a joint exhibition. You are also succesfull internationally and there are some other galleries emerging from Poland. How has the situation in Poland in the context of the art market changed in the last years?
Łukazs Gorczyca: We started as a gallery in 2001 and it was exactly the situation just described, it was a garage with some artists our age, nothing else. There was no visible market in Warszaw, no galleries working with contemporary or emerging artists, there was even no gallery, no private space, having regular exhibition program. Of course there were galleries or what they call galleries, they combine and sell painting with jewellery and shows from time to time, so this is no regular program, working with the artist and his production. So from one hand it was quite easy to start, we really didn’t invest any money and the costs at the very beginning were very low but during these last five or six years a lot changed. Now it is also a sort of hype, even locally, there is a visible group of clients, I wouldn’t maybe call them collectors yet, they are people who are interested, not only to spend some money but also to just collect. There are also new galleries appearing, which is a very interesting process, because you see that there are more people, young people, who decide to take the risk, which is now of course much higher, we of course didn’t have any competition. So now you have to face this hype, which is as a starting point much more complicated, you don’t really know the market when it is low. In general I would say the situation in Warzsaw, in Poland changed first of all because a group of artists became international. In my impression this was crucial that the artists, for the public, for the clients reflectes, that something really changed, that polish artists became a part of the international art system and the interantional network. At this moment they became active and tried to collect these artists although in a way it was already too late for the local clients because these artists were already too expensive for them. But it provoked another activity, investing in younger artists in the perspective that maybe they are the next ones. In a way a good example is the best example so in a way it’s luck it happened in Poland, that there were some succesful artists and successful gallery or something between a gallery and institution. The Foksal Gallery was the first and really the best which combined both commercial and non-commercial, successfully promoted a group of very important artists who really when through the international scene. The second thing is the infrastructure which is very important in this case and the fact that first the Foksal Foundation and then Raster started to work internationally is helpful to the artists for their present understanding of their position, even if some of these artists were already present and had some international galleries.
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