017 - Stroll with content into the gold rush
Ariel Reichman, I AM (NOT) SAFE, 2020
Courtesy the artist and PSM, Berlin
Berlin Lockdown
Hello Smart Art Lover,
I know it's been two months since I last wrote to you. The reason for the break was an acute lack of inspiration. The lockdown in this grey wintery city with few highlights and only the digital world as a constant companion shows once again that the art world lives from direct exchanges with other people. Plus, writing a newsletter about exhibitions when I'm not allowed to see any is an art form I'm yet to master. But what can you do at the moment?
Like the journalist Niklas Maak, you stroll through the city and look at art in shop windows and public spaces. The agency Cee Cee Creative has taken up this idea in its current newsletter. And the Index Berlin is organising Lights On! this coming Sunday in this context. My strolling favourite right now is Ariel Reichmann on Schöneberger Ufer in front of Galerie PSM. The interactive installation I AM NOT SAFE makes me forget the overindulgence of neon works around 2010. Online you can switch the NOT on and off. The neon lettering formulates a very relevant statement on the current pandemic. For the time being, I can only discover the rest of the exhibition online. In the process, I realise that with the themes of war, military and identity, the artist is following up on his first very strong exhibition at PSM ten years ago. Drive by and pause with Potsdamer Platz in the background.
Ariel Reichmann
This is Worse
January 24 - February 27, 2021
PSM, Berlin
psm-gallery.com
SUNDAY OPEN - Lights On!
An outdoor parcours
February 7, 2021
12 - 6 PM
indexberlin.com
Was mit Kunst - Ein Podcast von und mit Johann König | Podimo Podcast App
The Age of Content
Back home, you can visit the websites of Berlin's galleries. While surfing, I noticed that in the last two years some have taken the word content marketing to heart. Sprüth Magers masterfully implements this theme with films, photos and texts. Tanja Wagner also shows in the second Lockdown that she can play the digital keyboard with ease. And Office Impart stays true to its digital affinity and presents an online exhibition curated by co-founder Anne Schwanz, Come Closer. Definitely worth a visit. And, of course, Galerie König is not to be missed. In a recent interview in Handelsblatt, a German business daily, Johann König talks not only about turnover figures but also about the partial transformation of his gallery into a media house. With a magazine about the gallery artists, a very authentic presentation on Instagram and Co, the autobiography under the hashtag #blindergalerist and most recently the podcast Was mit Kunst (Something with Art) you can say this is the case. For the podcast he interviewed not only his artists but also the Zurich gallery owner Eva Presenhuber and the Berlin collector couple Karen and Christian Boros. You may remember the exhibition at Berghain. Personally, I don't like the impersonal sounding explanations of artists and terms in between, but the podcast is still a solid door opener for every aspiring collector. KÖNIG - the King of Gallery Content Marketing.
Was mit Kunst (Something with art)
Ein Podcast von und mit Johann König | Podimo
Clubhouse App
The Fear of Missing Out
I also owe it to Johann König that I found my way into the new place to be for the self-proclaimed elite in mid-January: Clubhouse. A phenomenon of the hour, this iPhone application resembles an endless succession of panel discussions in the form of conference calls. Currently in Beta, this app seems to flout pretty much every form of privacy policy, but the hype makes me forget all about it. Like the Klondike, I can see in real time how the German art and creative scene is staking out its sinecures in a gold rush. The stronger the ego, the more space seems to be taken up. Without further ado, all my fuses blow and I can't stop jumping from one discussion to the next, full of FOMO.
The topic of digitalisation, the future and the art market is being discussed in many different ways. I listen with amusement as Franca "Newcomer to mom life" and the artist Ralf Ziervogel babble non-stop nonsense with art advisor Tilman Kriesel and guests. I listen to Niklas Bolle and friends who try to help collectors find their way into the art world under the term Art Market 101. They ask Extremely Stupid Questions to the marketing guru of the art world, Magnus Resch. And together they call for the democratisation of the art world and the abolition of all the guardians of the grail of institutions. A few days later, the second issue follows with Extremely Stupid Questions for the reformed Helge Achenbach, who once served time in prison as Germany's most powerful art advisor for art fraud on the super wealthy Aldi Heir. Highly gripping. A counterpoint is provided by the art complicit Mon Mullerschön, art consultant and columnist for the lifestyle magazine Bunte from Munich, and Andrea von Goetz und Schwanenfliess, who works as an art consultant in the wealthy Eppendorf district of Hamburg. With Bernhard Schwenk from the Pinakothek der Moderne as guest, they rail against the common people as self-appointed high priestesses of fine art and call the democratisation of the art world the non-word of the year. Okay, the whole thing paints a very fascinating picture of the German art world in January 2021. Clubhouse: the perfect app for those long lockdown hours on the sofa.
Be brave, gentle and smart.
Yours,
Florian
