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Julian Charrière "Undefined Horizons"

Julian Charrière "Undefined Horizons"

Speech Tchoban & Kuznetbov "Towninbox"

Speech Tchoban & Kuznetbov "Towninbox"

Zimoun "318 Prepares DC-Motors, Cork Balls,  Cardboard Boxes 100 x 100 x 100cm"

Zimoun "318 Prepares DC-Motors, Cork Balls,  Cardboard Boxes 100 x 100 x 100cm"

Jeongmoon Choi – Drawing in Space

all images by artfridge, courtesy Olympus and the artists

Size does matter! Especially in the arts - whether in a good or a bad way. Despite last year's critical article "It’s Going to Be Huge" by American art critic Jerry Saltz's in the New York Times Magazine, I don't believe that the trend for big shows necessarily needs to be "watering things down". It can also be something positive: Some art works need space and some big spaces need large artworks. Nothing argues against enjoying spectacular art, as long as it has the ambition to be more than just enormous. In that sense, many of the large installations that are currently exhibited at Opernwerkstätten Berlin in the Olympus OM-D: Photography Playground exhibition fall into that category. Everything about this show is huge: a 7000 square-meter location, twelve interactive installations and eventually the expectation of the visitor...

ART COLOGNE 2013 / PART II: MODERN CLASSICS

Daniel Buren at Galeria Hilario Galguera, Mexico City

Laura Ford at Scheffel, Bad Homburg v. d. Höhe 

Booth Hauser & Wirth, Zürich, London, New York 

Christoph Schlingensief at Hauser & Wirth,  Zürich, London, New York

Jonathan Meese at Bo Bjerggaard, Copenhagen

Sigmar Polke at Michael Werner, Cologne, Berlin, New York

Jeff Cowen at Michael Werner, Cologne, Berlin, New York

Georg Baselitz at Michael Werner, Cologne, Berlin, New York

Jack Pierson at Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, Salzburg
All images by artfridge, courtesy Art Cologne, the artists and the galleries

After writing about the contemporaries in my last post, the second part of my review about the 47th edition of Art Cologne will be focussing on the modern classics segment on the first floor. For those of you who have never been to the fair I should mention that Art Cologne is very much separated into two different areas: the contemporaries upstairs, the classics downstairs. While Art Cologne Director Daniel Hug transformed and improved the upstairs area, the classic-department hasn't changed much: Botero, Beuys - Kneffel, Knoebel. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's 1926-painting “Strassenbild vor dem Friseurladen” even made it into the press, as Galerie Heinze & Ketterer had it on sale for 3,75 million Euros, which is said to be the highest price of the whole fair. 

ART COLOGNE 2013 / PART I: NADA & CONTEMPORARIES

Alicja Kwade (door) and Jeppe Hein (letters) at Johann König, Berlin

Michail Pirgelis at Sprüth Magers Berlin London

Thea Djordjadze at Sprüth Magers Berlin London

Walter Dahn at Sprüth Magers Berlin London

Booth by PSM Berlin

Joelle Tuerlinckx at Galerie Nächst St. Stephan

Andrei Roiter at AKINCI, Amsterdam

Peter Krauskopf at Galerie Jochen Hempel, Berlin, Leipzig

Booth by Produzentengalerie Hamburg

New Positions: Booth by artist Valentin Ruhry for Galerie Christine König, Vienna

Jürgen Teller at Suzanne Tarasieve, Paris

Anna Vogel at Conrads, Düsseldorf

David Ostrowski at Peres Projects, Berlin

Dash Snow at Peres Projects, Berlin

NADA: Absalon Kirkeby at Peter Amby Gallery

Booth Soy Capitan Berlin

NADA: Anna Virnich at Drei, Cologne

NADA: Booth DREI, Cologne 
// all images by artfridge, courtesy Art Cologne the galleries and the artists

The German Rhineland is an area with a long and popular tradition of art - its history still influences the art dealers' and curators' casual way of handling trends coming and going. Staying true to its distinctive style, the Rhineland manages to create a calm and unexcited balance between the new contemporaries and the big players - a unique and reliable phenomenon that can be best observed at the current 47th edition of Art Cologne, which includes roughly 200 exhibiting galleries. Carefully, Art Cologne director Daniel Hug moves the fair towards being the most contemporary one that the Rhineland has seen in decades - a welcome and desired change. In this post I will first give you an impression of the New Contemporaries (galleries founded after 2000), the external fair NADA (New Art Dealers Alliance, New York) and the established contemporary art galleries, which are, as usual, located on the second floor, whereas the next post will be showing pictures from the established and more classic Galleries on the first floor.

BERLIN: TAL R - EGYPTIAN BOY

all images: Works by Tal R, "Egyptian Boy" (23.03 - 20.04.2013), exhibited at Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin; Courtesy CFA and Tal R; photos by artfridge

According to the annual Forbes list of the saddest and happiest countries, Denmark is the second happiest country in the world. Looking at their culture - their depressing and rainy movies, their melancholic literature or their heartbreaking music - the Danes, however, don't really seem to fancy expressing how happy they actually are. Only few of their fine artists appear to be spreading the happy vibes. At least this is the case with Tal R, one of Denmark's most successful painters and sculptors, who was born in Israel in 1967 and came to Denmark before he turned one year old. He currently exhibits a very cheerful solo show at Contemporary Fine Arts in Berlin.