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In the last few years, three new independent art fairs were founded as a complementary program to the Kunstherbst Berlin (Art Autumn), the city’s annual fall celebration of the arts, with its traditional, well-established Art Forum Berlin. Berliner Liste, Berliner Kunstsalon and Preview Berlin are not meant as competitor programs to Art Forum Berlin, which takes place annually. Rather, they see themselves as enrichments of Art Forum Berlin and the already established art market, while providing another perspective on the current realities of the art scene in Berlin today. |
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When the Leaves Fall – Tina Kesting
In the last few years, three new independent art fairs were founded as a complementary program to the Kunstherbst Berlin (Art Autumn), the city’s annual fall celebration of the arts, with its traditional, well-established Art Forum Berlin. Berliner Liste, Berliner Kunstsalon and Preview Berlin are not meant as competitor programs to Art Forum Berlin, which takes place annually. Rather, they see themselves as enrichments of Art Forum Berlin and the already established art market, while providing another perspective on the current realities of the art scene in Berlin today. The main focus of the three young biennales is on emerging artists from an increasingly explosive art scene in Berlin, which plays an important role in the international art world with its over 350 galleries, as well as through its other non-gallery hotbeds of artistic production. Berliner Liste, Berliner Kunstsalon and Preview Berlin are an international platform for the art of young and talented, up and coming contemporary artists from around the world—a platform upon which a new generation of galleries and project spaces can present their works. The art fairs try to attract specialists who are interested in new movements and new trends while also offering art collectors, art lovers and art professionals a chance to engage with innovative art at a key development stage. Since these three young art fairs take place parallel to Art Forum Berlin, between September 29 and October 4 of this year, they can all profit from the large number of international art fans, artists, curators and art buyers that will gather in the city during these dates. Berliner Liste, Berliner Kunstsalon and Preview Berlin can offer all of these visitors the chance to discover young new artists and can provide insight into the independent art scene since galleries, artists’ networks, art spaces, freelance curators and other projects will show recent works by young artists who exist outside the mainstream and who are not dedicated only to commercial interests.
The oldest of these young art fairs, Berliner Liste takes place for the third year in a row, but provides more space and more international galleries for participation than ever before. In addition to the huge space of the electricity factory of the former Vitra-Design Museum in Berlin Prenzlauer Berg, the converted turbine halls also offer exhibition space perfect for the art fair, resulting in a better presentation for each gallery booth. In all, 43 young galleries from 11 different countries are exhibiting at the show, whereas more than half of them are participating at Berliner Liste for the first time. Besides the galleries from Europe (Italy, Spain, Belgium, Norway), exhibitors also come from Canada and the USA this year. A special event is a video hall, in which students of a video class from Berlin’s famous UdK (University of Arts) show their recent works.
In 2003, initiator Wolfram Völcker had the idea to organize a typical Berlin art fair for artists too experimental to be shown at the more conservative, better-established Art Forum. Thus, he built up a platform for young, lesser-known artists and gallery owners to exhibit their works and to experiment with new artistic streams and moods. The distinctiveness at Berliner Liste lies in the concept of “tandem booths,” in which one locally established gallery cooperates with another young, foreign gallery. Such an international exchange of ideas, communication and interaction can be the basis for success since artists become truly big names only when they gain international fame and have made all those important contacts. Electrolounge, a former distributing center where the show takes place, is a meeting point for small talk and for making international connections.
One participating exhibitor at Berliner Liste is Loge-Berlin-Friedrichstr. 210, which shows an installation of photographer and conceptual artist Martin MLecko. Big, formatted panorama photographs, influenced by allegories of Romanticism that mirror life, the past and ideas of beauty, shape his latest work. The artist thinks of the well-installed landscape gardens of the 19th century as the ideal interplay of cultivated nature and architectural forms. With small but important additions, he creates sensitive settings, carried by strength of color and intensity of natural light as his work Von der Hoffnung (Hope) shows. He transfers the human feeling of hope and melancholy into a three-dimensional space.
Artbuero Berlin, another exhibitor at Berliner Liste, shows works by the artist Matthias Haase. This artist has developed his figurative style to a new form of expression in his latest art. His large-scale canvases offer him the experimental space to explore various materials with strong brush strokes and diverse spattle traces. Free forms and informal marks offer up different possibilities and associations. The artist’s landscapes of color and shape might stand for new urban living spaces and mechanizations, for traffic and speed, or for globalization and pollution. In form and content, his works are torn between suffering for individuality on the one side and for world networking on the other.
After the great success of last year’s show, the Berliner Kunstsalon is in action for the third time—it was initiated by Edmund Piper in 2004, and takes place again in the Magazin, a former bus mechanic hall of the arena on Berlin’s waterfront. The space, having the charm of a ruinous factory, hasn’t been capacitated yet and still owns its old essence, which offers the perfect contrast to the young, dynamic art featured. The fair includes 42 exhibitions as well as two special shows curated by Asim Chugthai and Spunk Seipel, illustrating why Berlin’s international reputation as a dynamic center for the arts is well deserved. Exhibitors from several German cities, Paris, Poznan, Liverpool, Bregenz, Vilnius and Ptuj have booths at this year’s show. A promising program of lectures and video presentations complements the exhibitions, putting them into a common context and offering visitors the opportunity to approach not only the works on show, but also the ideas therein, and from a number of different perspectives. "Our priority, this time around, is to show the extent to which the Berlin art scene is part of a network and, indeed, how it influences people and institutions beyond the city,” said Edmund Piper, director of the Berliner Kunstsalon.
The large art institutions in Berlin, NBK and the NGBK, Bethanien, Kunstraum Kreuzberg and the GEHAG Forum support the Berliner Kunstsalon through further communication and curators. Smaller art institutions along with studio cooperatives and music clubs in the city form an important link to other sources.
The youngest biennale, Preview Berlin – the Emerging Art Fair is on show for the second time after its inaugural run in 2005. It was launched last year as a joint effort by four galleries; Berlin – Förderkoje®, Galerie Jarmuschek und Partner, Galerie Kuttner Siebert and loop – raum für aktuelle kunst. Again, it takes place at Backfabrik in Berlin Mitte, a location closely connected to the vibrant gallery and art scene in Berlin. Preview Berlin thinks of itself as a host to a multifaceted and surprising spectrum of emerging contemporary art. It has positioned itself as an important and influential event on the international art fair circuit in addition to its two older sisters, Berliner Liste and Berliner Kunstsalon. Although Preview Berlin is the newest fair on stage, it has grown the fastest. Fifty-two galleries from 11 countries will show hot new artistic works, and 22 exhibitors will be participating in this show for the first time. It offers low-priced booth space for production and promotion of high quality art while also providing art collectors, art lovers and art professionals with the opportunity to view and discover an extensive range of exciting new works from around the world and to gather in one location as other fairs like Art Forum cannot. In the last few years, the traditional Art Autumn has grown into a multifaceted, multicultural and international art event that is getting hotter and hotter year after year.
