INTERFACE

REVIEW

Project(or) Art Fair

Rotterdam, The Netherlands
6-10 February

Reviewed by: Karin Kihlberg

Project(or) Art Fair in Rotterdam is, as its title implies, something of a hybrid between a curatorial project and a commercial art fair. Situated in the central location of the grand former post office building, Project(or) opened alongside the city’s established fair Art Rotterdam. Taking advantage of the influx of dealers, galleries, curators and press that the larger fair brings to the city, Project(or) Art Fair created a platform for young commercial spaces as well as non commercial initiatives and independent curators.

Project(or) was organised by MAMA (Showroom for Media and Moving Art in Rotterdam) who in past years had been given a space at Art Rotterdam to represent the more experimental activities in the city. This year MAMA decided not to be a small part in the larger fair but to make their own show. Their idea was to use the format of a traditional art fair but to present something more engaging both for the audience and for the participating initiatives, making a critique of the commercial art system and testing the format of the Art Fair as a valid curatorial platform. This approach became apparent in the range of initiatives that were specially selected to take part in Project(or).

The Centre of Attention from London are known to work with an experimental approach which stems from their ongoing enquiry into the phenomenon of art production, presentation and consumption. For Project(or) they created an exclusive installation making clear to visitors that their stand was restricted to the ‘art players’, refusing entry to those who didn’t have the right appearance. I was lucky enough to visit during a slow moment when they had no dignitaries to attend to, and was granted entry with the terms that I must leave if anyone important-looking came along.

The entrance to the stand was draped with thin muslin and stepping through it felt like stepping into a stage play; I played the part of the important buyer, the Centre of Attention played the part of the gallerists, and the artworks were props being purposefully shifted around.

I was asked to take a seat and was invited to choose an artist from their catalogue. I chose to view the work of Jasper Joffe. The work was collected from one of the stacks of paintings and handled by the assistant wearing white gloves. It was an unusual way to view a painting, with such an element of service. There was a ‘liveness’ to this arrangement and I suddenly felt implicit in the experience after so many heartless art fair visits. As well as placing a focus on the visitors to the fair, the installation also created a focus on the artwork, a purpose-built mechanism to counter the habit of ‘scanning’ at an art fair. The Centre of Attention’s forthright discrimination towards their audience, no matter how tongue-in-cheek, meant that the chosen few could have an art fair experience with an unusual level of focus. This was topped off with The Centre of Attention’s running commentary, providing a good mix of sly humour and a genuine appreciation of the works they presented.

Project(or) had a strong international presence, which was a direct reaction to the Netherlands-centric approach of Art Rotterdam. Of the twenty-eight participating initiatives twenty-two were from outside the Netherlands including a number from as far as Australia, Africa and the USA. Many of the initiatives had been specially selected to challenge ideas of what an art fair could be. The only real restraint was the need to have at least ten per cent of their display for sale. This was a challenge in itself for some initiatives, who found themselves offering sandwiches to counter the rule. This challenge was taken on to the fullest by AK28 from Stockholm, who presented their entire non-commercial, self-funded, independent and experimental contemporary art space, along with the skills and dedication of its members, as the object for sale.

AK28 is organised by a group of thirteen artists, designers and architects, and has for the last five years been an important player in the Stockholm art scene. In their stand they promoted the successes of their gallery through photographs of past events, and a catalogue containing texts written by each member discussing what they thought were the strengths of the initiative and what services a potential buyer might be interested in if they hire or buy AK28. These texts were also displayed in a commercial video (literally as subtitles over TV commercials) giving the sale offer faux-corporate appeal.

While so many artist run spaces are looking towards the commercial market as a survival tactic, AK28 symbolically sidestepped this with an exploration into the relative market value of the ‘non-commercial’ space itself. While its offer for sale crossed with a call for corporate sponsorship, in the context of a fair for collectors of art it was a brilliant proposition that a collector might want their own artist-run space instead of owning a work. Further to this it hinted at how being owned in such a way might alter the very nature of a self-funded artists’ initiative.

Project(or) asked whether an art fair is a valid experimental site for curatorial initiative and for experiencing art, a cutting question amongst the onslaught of new fairs and their various fringe fairs that follow. While the participants were specially chosen to show at Project(or) to challenge this notion, it seemed many appeared nevertheless just to be taking part in an art fair. The presentation of works at Centrifugal Projects from London certainly had a more traditional presence at the fair in this sense. They presented an exhibition entitled ‘Interior Motives’, including a range of artwork which examined notions of the domestic. What really made Centrifugal Projects stand out from the others was the apparent and constant bustling atmosphere of potential buyers and important looking people circling around the space, inquiring for further information on the artists and prices of the artwork. Curator Ken Pratt explained that through being as forthrightly commercial as possible he proposed a counter-critique to the non-commercial spaces’ critique of commerce in the art world. There is of course a slight paradox in here as this counter to commercial art fairs was one of the reasons for Project(or) in the first place.

Centrifugal Projects was, however, not alone in appearing just as any stand in the major art fairs, even with its curatorial concept tying the stand together. Of the twenty-eight stands, it was only a handful who really made a considered and imaginative response to the fair’s curatorial premise. It would be easy to come to the conclusion that the Project part of Project(or) Art Fair was a ruse to add critical weight to the part which was quite strictly Art Fair. And this would not really seem unusual when a big player like Frieze Art Fair has Frieze Projects, which itself has a similar purpose of giving credibility to a fair’s commercial exhibits both by having some fun and being the first to counter its own nature with ephemeral and challenging activities.

With or without the curatorial challenge, Project(or) was still an art fair – its raison d’etre being the presence of international collectors and press present at Art Rotterdam. Many of the galleries I spoke to, commercial and otherwise, had few expectations to sell any work directly, but the networking experience in this international fair format was invaluable. So while it was invigorating to visit those who had engaged so inventively with the fair’s curatorial issue, if it weren’t for the number of initiatives who appeared to be working the commercial market as at any other fair, Project(or) Art Fair just wouldn’t have made sense. But while it pertained to critique Art Rotterdam and fairs in general, and more importantly to offer an alternative for how such fairs might develop themselves, what Project(or) really did was to be open enough to critique itself.

The curatorial framework of Project(or) stands on shaky ground, but this really demonstrates the difficulty of effectively critiquing the dominant commercial system while at the same time acknowledging that making some money is not always a bad thing. The challenge to the commercial system is not the important thing that Project(or) attempted. The real value was in admitting that the prominence of art fairs and their drive-by nature of art viewing should not be ignored by those wishing to experiment, and Project(or) made a hearty stab at creating a coherent and challenging group show within the art fair format. Maybe it was in part due to the manageable size of Project(or) Art Fair, but in the end it succeeded in many ways, creating something which was on the whole warm and engaging, a big step for an art fair by any means.

UK participating galleries included:
www.thecentreofattention.org
www.centrifugalprojects.org
www.motinternational.org
www.vegasgallery.co.uk

Full list of participants see:
www.showroommama.nl

Writer detail:
By Karin Kihlberg

Venue detail:

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