Interview with Peter Blauer
Liste Art Fair is one of the freshest art fairs out there, priding itself, for the past 20 years, on their inquisitive eye towards new talent, new galleries, and what’s next in the art world. We spoke to Liste’s artistic director Peter Blauer about the fair, which will take place June 16-21 at its home in Basel, Switzerland.
To what do you owe the success LISTE Art Fair?
There are a variety of reasons: On the one hand, 20 years ago there was a new generation of galleries representing very interesting artists who were noticeably absent in Basel, the most important art fair city. Those were our first galleries – and many of them are now considered to be among the most important galleries in the world, for example: Air de Paris, Paris; Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm; Massimo de Carlo, Milan; Stephen Friedman, London; Martin Janda, Vienna; neugerriemschneider and Neu, both from Berlin; Maureen Paley, London; Eva Presenhuber, Zurich; Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen; David Zwirner, New York, just to name a few. Then, our big focus was on quality. Our number of galleries, “only” 79, – and not maybe 120 … or even more … is kept low and allows us to maintain a really high level of quality. So, it was never about showing the greatest number of galleries possible to make lot of money …. but rather, the quality level determines the number of galleries. And certainly, a third point would be that we are almost the only fair in the world that is dedicated to a new generation of galleries. All of the big fairs today show young, new galleries. But a lot of times, it’s more along the lines of a side show. However, we concentrate exclusively on the “new ones”! Our 20-year history shows that the path of almost every gallery established after 1995 and considered important today has led to and through LISTE. Yes, we are the most successful promotion and discoverer fair par excellence.
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Clearing, New York/BrusselsCalvin Marcus
Structure with Six Green Calvins, 2014
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How does Liste Art Fair renew itself each year?
Every year we are on the ‘hunt’ for the most intriguing and most promising new galleries. And we annually present 10 to 20 galleries for the first time at LISTE. This year, e.g., we are introducing 13 new galleries that were selected from 240 new applicants by an expert jury composed exclusively of museum people. (You see, “every” new young gallery applies to LISTE.) We take quite a bit of time in the selection process, look at a lot of galleries, keep ourselves informed about what new developments there are in the art world – and of course, to that end, we have a lot of consultants worldwide.
In our popular culture, we see that many important art trends are rising in art fairs rather than biennials or exhibitions (there is a discussion on this as well). People can prefer to go to art fairs to discover new art. Do you think this is an advantageous thing for an art fair (to give the main importance showing new and discoverable art, rather than commercial (sellable) art) ? And how do you cope with it?
Yes, we place a lot of emphasis on it and it informs our concept: That “new”, unknown or more emerging artists, new approaches, and trends are shown at LISTE. When they apply, galleries have to indicate whether their artists, e.g., will be showing for the first time in Switzerland. We want to be able to introduce new, exciting positions to collectors and museum people. And that’s what makes LISTE so interesting. You know, there have been a lot of artists shown here who were unknown (and were bargains) and who are now famous (and expensive). That’s also why so many curators come to LISTE – to discover something new. They want to be the “first” to debut these artists in their museums. Along with the new introductions, it’s of course also important that those galleries that have been with us a while also have the opportunity to show the development of their artists. So, there we have it – the new and development and consistency.
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LISTE previewPhoto: Daniel Spehr
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This is Liste Art Fair’s 20th year, do you have any special program for occasion?
Many new positions will be presented. Of the 79 galleries, we will be presenting over 30 solo presentations. That is important to us as emerging positions fmust be shown broadly so that people can “recognize” what is at the heart of the artist’s art.
And then there is our Performance Project, which offers daily presentations of fascinating performance artists. Eva Birkenstock, a connoisseur in the field, will be curating the Project for the first time. And by the way, the Performance Project has been around for 11 years at LISTE. In this field as well, we started showing performances before the art form had become so fashionable. When we started the Project, our goal was to provide a platform for performance, an art form that has long had a tough time in the market. The detailed program, with its many exciting positions, is available at: http://www.liste.ch/programme/performance-project/
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Performance ProjectFlorentina Holzinger/ Vincent Riebeek
Nils Amadeus Lange, Annina Machaz, Manuel Scheiwiller
GONZO
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How do you choose the participant galleries and do you prefer mainly emerging and young or established? And why?
Part of our (self-imposed) mission is introducing the newest and most intriguing galleries worldwide each year. That is our concept and our success … laugh. We want to be a platform for a new generation of galleries. For established galleries, there are clearly enough fairs… or maybe too many. We see ourselves as a promotion fair seeking to help new, intriguing galleries get into the international market “faster”. Our consultant network, which we have built up over the last 20 years, keeps us abreast of the “what and where” regarding new galleries worldwide. The galleries are then selected by a jury composed exclusively of museum people.
In our culture, what is the most important mission of an art fair?
I don’t know whether we have a “mission”, but we have assumed an important function in that we provide a much respected and acclaimed platform to a new, young generation of galleries and artists. The advantage of art fairs is: all kinds of information and a lot of contacts in a short span of time. Certainly, art fairs have played a role in the rise in popularity of contemporary art and have helped to it from remaining only the province of the elite. Of course, we shouldn’t forget that a fair also involves sales … artists want to be able to live from their work … (something that a lot of them are unable to do). Their “manager”, the gallerist, works hard to sell enough and see that they become famous.