Interview: Sabrina van der Ley

Sabrina van der Ley being interviewed by kopenhagen-reporter Kathrine Eriksen

You’ve been the artistic director of the Art Forum Berlin since 2000. What was your project from the start, and what are your ambitions for the future?

Just a short question…well, when I started the job in 2000 it was on a point where there already was a discussion going on about the direction that the fair started with. Should it stay that way? Originally when they started in 96’ it was art from the 50’ies, from the post-war to the present. Then in 2000 we decided that it made more sense to concentrate on contemporary art and forget about the post-war. So it’s really present; a bet is from the 80’ties to the present, but basically it became clearer each year that it’s the actual production, that more or less comes up in studios in the past year or two, and that actually works the best for the Berlin situation.

It doesn’t mean that there can’t be historical positions as well, but the general focus is on new productions - not necessarily by young artists but younger works. That’s basically where we wanted to go and how we wanted to distinguish ourselves form the other fair in Germany more or less. Also from other fairs in Europe which tends to go, say from the 1920’ties to the present.

The fair now has about 120 galleries and a special exhibition, which this year for the first time is thematically. This is something we want to continue, and it will always be an external curator that’s coming in and makes the choice of artists from the programs of the galleries instead of just following an idea in a concept he or she has got. Tomorrow evening at eight o’clock we’ll be announcing the curator of next year’s exhibition, so that’s already settled. And we will try to do that every year in advance. So this is the general direction; trying to aside from a fair obviously being a market place and instead making the content carry the market and not the other way around.

You said something before like “Elsewhere, art collectors may find good markets, but the "alchemists" of contemporary art are found in Berlin..”

Yes, it’s not about paying 700 thousand for a work. This is not what Berlin is about and there’re other fairs for that. We don’t need to do the same thing as everybody else.

Because all the artists are here, basically, it’s here the production is coming out - the studios are just around the corner. This is what makes it lively and where it’s actually connected to where the fair is taking place. So in that sense it’s sort of reinventing itself all the time. We don’t have to do much about it – it just happens. The artists are moving into town, so something new happens every day. We want to continue with these thing we started in 2000; doing artistic lounges, doing panel discussion. Basically major changes will probably go on downstairs, where we’re showing the institutions, the non-profit places, and the magazines. Tomorrow morning we’re doing a presentation of some young architect students from Dresden, who invented a new layout. If they find all the positive answers to the problems we might make it look different next year. So that’s the next step.

There aren’t any big things going to change, though. Of cause we’re trying to make the quality better each year, trying to get more audience – to really work on getting a good professional audience. But as a general conception we don’t want the fair to grown, because the exhibitors and audience really appreciate it the way it is now. It’s not a giant fair where you always have the feeling that you’re missing something. When you go through the fair here, you really feel comfortable because you can comprehend it.

Earlier we held it in other halls, much larger in space than these, but not nearly as nice – they didn’t have daylight and it was these late 70’ties buildings. We made a decision in 2004 that we wanted to move to these halls; to a nice environment in order to make it a really good place for art presentation. And then there’s a natural limitation – 120 is the max. Possibly one could think of taking the freestyle stands away from the gallery outer bed to the same hall as the special exhibition, but this needs to be decided.

But then again it’s nice to create a dialogue between the two

Yes, absolutely. It’s also giving the rhythm of the layout a very good mode, because most of the freestyles are solo-presentations and it creates a place to contemplate a bit longer other than seeing the usual kind of shop-presentation, which of cause I mean – for some people it makes normal sense to make only solo-presentations, it’s a decision of the galleries. If we can, we will try to encourage galleries to do more solo-presentations, not by rule or anything but just because of the response we get from it. It’s really appreciated and usually the stands look much better, because they’re more focused.

The idea is to concentrate on contemporary art; is that part of a branding of Berlin as a city in general? It seams very attractive for artists at the moment. Why do you they they’re so drawn to Berlin?

Well, two things: The very central one is that their friends come here, they come and visit and they say: “It’s great! I come as well” – they’re coming because all the others are here.

It creates a synergy effect…

Yes, people come from all over the place to be living and working in the same city so they can exchange thoughts. This is very appreciated by the artists, obviously, and then the general mood and critical exchange between artists is very constructive here in Berlin. It’s not so much about competition, it’s really about visiting each others studios, to do some work between them and it seems to be working quite well. Berlin is not so hectic and you’re not necessary driven to a strategy focusing only on being extremely successful. People appreciate that they can concentrate on working here. Also, evidently, you can afford a bigger studio. People come from say New York or London, where you could never get that much space, so suddenly they can start to make totally different kind of work.

That’s certainly one thing; another is the growing art scene. With galleries from other German cities and abroad moving here the chances are that you can actually find a gallery. In general I think Berlin is interesting for the artists. The scene is very from the one in Paris, New York and London – it’s just not ready in the same way. You can still find these different open spots where you can plug in and do something - find the freedom to make all kinds of exhibitions. The backdrop of the city nurtures the imagination in it’s constantly changing of physical outlook, and that’s rather inspiring to people.

It’s more lawless than other places?

Yes, it is. It’s not totally organized - not everything is settled and of cause this can trigger a lot of ideas. It seems to be a very constructive place for artistic production.

Art Forum Berlin 2006

Compared to your normal curatorial work how is it to work on a project like the fair?

Well, of cause you don’t have to think that you’re actually designing what is being shown. The part where I can really put in my curatorial work is in the projects with the artists in the lounges, the discussion programmes that we’re doing, and by working together with the curator of the special exhibition. For this year I had to pick the theme, suggested it to the curator: “Is this something you think you can do an exhibition with?” and she said yes, and then came up with the concept.

In the case of the galleries; once they’re picked, they decide for themselves want they want to do.

I go around, of cause, looking at younger galleries, travel to other fairs, and try to bring in new interesting positions. So by “acquisition” you try to give the fair a certain shape. In some cases you make suggestions to the galleries - what is rather likely to sell or to get accepted by the jury, what would actually look good, and capture the interest of people in Berlin, because it is a different audience. Even if there’s a similarity in the collectors that come here and to London, it’s completely other things they would look for here. So in that sense it’s more the negotiation part of curating that I perform here at the fair.

Compared to previous Art Forum fairs what do you think of this one - commercially and aesthetically?

I think it looks better, which of cause is totally subjective because I don’t like painting much - certainly not figurative painting – this boom of painting cooling down in favour of more sculpture, installation, or more minimal, theoretical, and conceptual positions is totally my taste, so I’m happy about that. I know that other people are saying: “Well, it looks a bit boring at some spots” but in general the response is really good.

Business is probably about the same. Some of the galleries are totally euphoric because they sold everything already at two o’clock on the opening day; others haven’t sold that much. In general I think what is interesting to hear from the galleries is that they have a lot of Berlin clients. Some galleries said that they only sold to Berliners, and there’s this old “myth” of Berlin not having a market… well, it has a market which is imported because a lot of international audiences come to spend their money here, but now, during the last three years, also the Berliners are starting to buy. I don’t know if it has to do with MoMA, but suddenly somebody told them: “Look, you could have had half of the stuff in their collection if you had bought it earlier. And if you would do a MoMA exhibition in ten years again you could see all these artists that are living in Berlin being represented by galleries on the fair. And again it would have been sold to MoMA or to American collectors, who would have donated it to MoMA, so you better start buying the stuff.”

I mean; there’re a growing number of younger collectors that are coming here, and that’s really good to see. There’s also some of the next generation of collectors - the new generation coming up - whereas in other parts of Germany you still have the big collectors, Cologne is an example, and not so much the second generation coming out of it.

Do you think that’s part of a higher interest in art – both in the market but also amongst the normal audience? And do you think this development is irreversible or will it top at some point?

You never know. It seams as if life in general has speeded up so much – there’s a fashion craze, there’s a new economy craze, there’s a music craze, and now there’s also an art craze. Well, eventually it becomes something else, and you can not predict if it goes on. But still, there was never… I mean, I been working in the arts since 1990, with contemporary art, and I never had the feeling that there was so much interest in contemporary art as there is now, which is amazing. It’s great to see that so many people come to look at art and a lot of the artists, who are not the big stars, are finally making a living without having to do odd-jobs. So both the growing interest and obviously with that also a growing amount of buyers is quite helpful. I would guess that this will continue - for a while at least, maybe not all the time at this level. Some people are willing to spend enormous amount of money, which again mostly happens in Americans and not so much in Europe. European collectors are always a bit more reasonable at art fairs, and they would always say: “Well, maybe not at this price, then we would rather look at the younger artists.”

One of the talks at the fair concerned the fact that because of the increasing interest there’s also a boom in the price of art, which could mean that the public museum can no longer afford to buy the art – or at least not the good art. That could mean a big change of the whole cultural education, and a turn back to a patronage-conception where the museums are dependent on private donations?

Which is also not new, actually the old National Gallery e.g. was founded as a collector’s museum in a sense. I mean, the director of the museum had a very clear vision about what he wanted, and he talked to four or five big, rich people here in Berlin at the time, who weren’t all of them collecting already when he was starting with his advice. He went around with them and shopped and they paid the bill. It completely depends on how good you are as a director of the museum. I think you shouldn’t be at the mercy of the collectors, saying: “You should take this because I’m not giving you anything else”, that you should freely decide. I think this is very common in America, where it just works in that way – museum directors travelling with trustee groups, making a wish list, saying: “I want this, this, and this” and then they decide to give the money or not, it’s not that big a deal. In Berlin in any case one would wish that the directors would be a bit more independent of the private market, but it’s rather unlikely that this would ever get better again, I’m afraid, because the lack of public funding for institutions would probably remain this way. Also there’s other options museums are fairly inventive; one German director bought video-works together with three other museums. You just have to be inventive and deal with the situation of lack of funds. There are possibilities to circumvent the private money. Another thing is that you can also just rely on your vision as a director and buy early enough, and then of cause it’s cheaper.

Can you see any new tendencies – both International and in German art?

Well, German art is rather diverse. Berlin have more… maybe you can say more conceptual, installation works. In general I think that aside from the people having their walls full and now turning to sculpture – this could be a pragmatically reason for why, who knows, people being bored with all these figurative things. It also very interesting that there’s private collectors now also collecting video, because maybe now they understood that it’s not such a big deal, you don’t have to build a black box if you own a video. It depends on what you buy, but you can project it on a wall and you don’t have to have it on all the time, you can have screenings or what ever - there’s other ways of dealing with it. It’s becoming more normal to have it in a private context, to have video works in your collection. It’s rather interesting and fairly new I would say. I guess the galleries did a good mediation with their clients that they find that these things are OK – you don’t have to show it on 200 sq. meters.

I think that’s a general tendency in the market; there’re also a lot of really good artists in the media of this and that’s why people want it. There’s a lot of really interesting works - it’s not all only documental. The artists also got a bit smarter about using the media. It’s not so one to one anymore; just because it’s time based it has to have a narration. It still has to be documentary in a way, but now they’re dealing with it in another way, sometimes more painterly or sculpturally, and I think that’s what intriguing people now, that the media is taken some place else.

Do you have any high-light at the fair - any artistic preferences?

Well, quite a number actually. One of my favourite stands at this fair is Michael Müller at Ursula Walbröl, a very beautiful conceptual position, and a totally manic artist who produces, I don’t know, one or two pieces per year. It’s clearly not much of a market, but it’s a very smart, very intriguing work.

I also really like the stand of Barbara Thumm, the big sculpture, and then the pieces of Heidi Specker. I like Alex Rischer; the photo series at Adamski, an absurd idea and very good. Vangelis Vlahos at Breeder, the stand of David Pretorius is great – its minimalism, a really clear, clear statement. Kamel Mennour and the work of Adel Abdessemed . Yes, a lot of things - I think some more money would be nice so I could go shopping •