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| Not-So-Well-Known Strategies Zane Onckule, Art Critic A conversation with Peter Bläuer, director of LISTE. The young art fair in Basel | |
 LISTE. The Young Art Fair in Basel. Publicity photo | |
| “We live in the Financial Times” – this is how the artistic director of the new Phaidon publication ‘Cremier. Contemporary Art in Culture’ justifies the peachy colour of its pages in a YouTube video clip. The magazine, presented on one of the Art Basel panel discussion days, is attractive and sweeping in scope, and it had invited ten top curators, using their experience, to ob¬serve artistic trends and select the authors most relevant to today – artists who have emerged into international view within the last five years, or are still relatively unknown. This mood of this background seems appropriate when referring to the contemporary art zeitgeist event, the week-long (14.–20.06.) LISTE. The Young Art Fair In Basel, whose director Peter Bläuer, in a pleasant but relatively brief meeting, gave standard press answers to equally predictable questions. It all gives, one hopes, food for thought. Zane Onckule: This year is the 15th time that LISTE is taking place. We are meeting on the third day, when perhaps some conclusions can begin to be drawn. Peter Bläuer: For several years LISTE has been successful, and this year already on the opening day everyone we wanted to see was there, including the major collectors: representatives of MoMa, Centre Pompidou and other museums. The collectors made notes and bought works, choosing authors who are becoming very relevant and whose works everyone wants to own, while the museum people searched for authors who could be of interest to their activities in the near future. Financially too, we are satisfied, even though Switzerland is still slightly suffering from the crisis, and the effects of this can be perceived in the decrease in scope and capacity of our visitors; beside a large part of LISTE visitors are not from Switzerland. | |
 LISTE. The Young Art Fair in Basel. Publicity photo | |
| Z.O.: What was the motivation for establishing LISTE? P.B.: Fifteen years ago, Art Basel had already established itself as the world’s number one art market event, and every gallery wanted to be represented there. At the same time, a new generation of galleries appeared, and taking into account their specificity and orientation towards young, promising authors, and also the fact that, back then, Art Basel didn’t have a special section devoted to new galleries and authors (now there is the Art Statements Basel – Z.O.), so artists of the younger generation had no way of presenting themselves. Against this background, two galleries – the Eva Presenhuber Galerie and Peter Kilchmann Galerie – approached me with a proposal to create a new art market with the aim of representing this art. We went first of all to the organisers of Art Basel and asked if they would be prepared to change their structure and add a new section. At that time Art Basel didn’t change anything, which I, of course, understand and respect. As a result, we felt compelled to start working on the formation of an autonomous event. Z.O.: What is LISTE today? P.B.: The structure and functions of LISTE are to introduce new galleries and new authors. The galleries here are usually no more than five years old, and the majority have been in existence for no more than 12 to 18 months. It follows that most of the collectors who visit us do not know about the re¬spective galleries or the authors they are offering. In parallel to the new galleries we also work with galleries that have been in the market for a longer period of time, but whose profile is nevertheless to do with young authors. The artists you see in LISTE are usually under 40 years of age. We take care to make this a place where young and promising, but still relatively unknown artists and galleries can be seen. Although, of course, the list of authors on offer includes some names that already mean something in today’s artistic environment. Z.O.: What is your relationship with Art Basel? How does LISTE position itself against this background? Are you competitors to some degree? P.B.: No, we are not competitors and have never been competitors. LISTE has always been interested in discovering things that don’t fit in with the Art Basel objectives. Moreover, the fact of being together plays a big role – LISTE and Art Basel and events that take place in the same city and the same week, just a few blocks from each other. We are a perfect fit precisely because we each do something different. Z.O.: Art Basel has now incorporated a section called Art Statements in its programme, which offers young authors and is therefore encroaching on the field of uncovering new contemporary art hitherto nurtured by LISTE. P.B.: Yes, to a certain extent that is correct. Every year the Art Basel jury are amongst the first people to become familiarised with LISTE and without a doubt they do this to find authors for the next year’s Art Statements. The specification for this section is very interesting, in that galleries and artists can appear in it for one year only. Hence you can observe a kind of movement whereby galleries and artists taking part in Art Statements may be offered in LISTE again the next year. If this gallery is important to us and it offers authors who seem highly interesting in the context of LISTE, we can accept its participation again. In total, galleries can take part in LISTE for three years, and after these years we assess whether or not to accept the gallery again for a fourth time, because our aim is to justify our objective of being a platform for new galleries. | |
 LISTE. The Young Art Fair in Basel. Publicity photo | |
| Z.O.: What is the gallery selection process? Inform¬ation about the jury is not published, but how would you describe these people and their choices, their special in¬terests? Do these form the LISTE requirements? P.B.: Yes, we have our own jury which selects from the galleries who have applied. The LISTE jury is made up of museum people who work on an everyday basis with contemporary art and specific authors. Therefore it seems logical that we would not wish to needlessly burden these people by publishing their names. Z.O.: What are the criteria for choosing galleries? P.B.: The first and most essential thing is quality. We need the best galleries. We are also interested in covering as geographically broad an area as possible, although we will never include a gallery from China just for the sake of having one from that region. It is important that the gallery has an internationally oriented programme and interesting artists. At present we see a preponderance of interesting Eastern European galleries, so you could say we are activating our attention in that direction. A good example is the Warsaw gallery Lokal 30. Z.O.: What is the LISTE surprise for this year? P.B.: Always, when reading the gallery application forms, we find something we didn’t even know existed. This time it is a very new gallery called Fluxia from Milan, which we had no idea existed. But we knew right away that we wanted this gallery in this year’s LISTE. However, this sort of risk is a part of our responsibility and skill in trying to anticipate the future interrelationships between art and its market. Z.O.: How do you divide up this responsibility? In other words, what is your personal taste and interest when thinking about today’s young authors? P.B.: I am open to many things, but I can’t concretely list them. Perhaps what I can say is that I am especially interested in the conceptual aspects of art and not so much in emotionally charged works, although not infrequently the latter also can attract me. Z.O.: Is LISTE becoming overly intellectual? I overheard something like that on the train a few days ago. Is such a claim fair and relevant? P.B.: I don’t think so. Moreover, that is quite obvious. /Translator into English: Filips Birzulis/ | |
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