Review of Art Cologne 2016-2017

Art Cologne brings together 200 leading international galleries from over 20 countries presenting a broad offering of modern and contemporary works in all price segments and movements by more than 2,000 artists. ART COLOGNE presents art lovers and collectors with the most varied offering segments, including the GALLERIES section with modern and postwar art and extending to the modern and contemporary art of established galleries.

This also includes the NEW POSITIONS section, a sponsorship programme that makes it possible for young artists to present their works in their own promotional booths next to the stands of their gallery owners. In addition to this, with the NEUMARKT section, ART COLOGNE presents the central platform for the “cutting edge art” of young galleries that have existed for no more than ten years. Curated presentations and special projects from galleries of all age classes are also found in the NEUMARKT section.

Originally founded in 1967 in Gürzenich, the medieval dance and department store of the city of Cologne, and the international art market should change forever. North Rhine-Westphalia and the neighboring Benelux countries in Europe have remained the region with the highest density of industry, capital and collectors. In the long term, they wanted to promote the new national art production, i.e. the young German artists, and place it internationally and interest a new collector audience.

Today’s Art Cologne as a fair for classical modernism, post-war art and contemporary art, one of the most important international addresses for exceptional and high quality art of the 20th and 21st centuries. Around 200 leading international galleries from more than 20 countries come together annually and present a broad offering of modern and contemporary works in all price segments and movements by more than 2,000 artists.

A supporting programme of exhibition openings and events in museums and institutions throughout the Rhineland, as well as integrated services, pleasant lounges and the best food service round off the trade fair and make ART COLOGNE one of the events of this year in Germany that you shouldn’t miss.

Art Cologne 2017
The 51st edition, Art Cologne 2017 presents 200 of the most important galleries of the international art world, 39 of them participate for the first time, the galleries present works by 2,000 artists that extend from Modern and Postwar Art to Contemporary Art in the sector GALLERIES. The New Positions offers space for exhibitors in the sector GALLERIES to present additional one-artist presentations of young emerging artists in separate rooms attached to their booths.

New for 2017 is the Neumarkt section that presents a new focus on young galleries and on selected curated projects between galleries in the Neumarkt collaborations section. With the new format Neumarkt, young galleries that have not been in existence for more than ten years present themselves in three different stand areas. This means that the sections New Contemporaries and Collaborations are integrated into one platform and form the central location for young art at Art Cologne 2017. Thus, in addition to areas for small stands with special solo presentations, there will also be medium-sized stands with carefully selected group exhibitions with a maximum of three artists. In addition to this, Neumark also offers larger stands that are exclusively dedicated to curated presentations by galleries of all age classes, also in the form of pavilions.

The 51st edition of Art Cologne brings an impressive list of galleries from all over the world, including China, the USA, Hungary, Finland, and Russia. ‘Blue chip’ galleries include David Zwirner, Hauser & Wirth, Gagosian, as well as WHITE CUBE from London.

Two special events will also mark this year’s edition of Art Cologne. The first is the installation of the large letter L by Michael Riedel in the entrance hall. The L represents the meeting of the advisory board that made the decision about the acceptance or rejection of galleries to the fair.

The second event is the special exhibition titled Galerie Springer, Berlin, 1948-1998, which remembers and documents the life achievements of one of the most important Berlin gallery owners of the 20th century, Rudolf Springer. He was among a few gallery owners who were active in Berlin in the post-war years.

Highlights
The centerpiece of the booth will be Chris Burden’s Buddha’s Fingers (2014–15), comprised of thirty-two cast-iron street lamps in a closed singular colonnade. The title refers to the citrus fruit that is a Chinese symbol of happiness and good fortune. The booth itself is accessible only via two narrow openings. On the exterior four walls are works by Rudolf Stingel, Cady Noland, and Richard Prince, which hold allusions to melancholy or social dystopia.

Among the young owners and galleries are ‎Deborah Schamoni, Jan Kaps‎, Lars Friedrich, ‎‎Soy Capitan, Future Gallery, KM, Silberkuppe, Teminkova & Kasela, and LambdaLambdaLambda.

The abc Gallery from Budapest will focus on the color field painter Imre Bak, and other Hungarian artists such as the sculptor Peter Szalay. Domestic scene is also in focus of the gallery Anhava from Helsinki, which will represent artists Sally Tykäane, Marika Mäkelä, who is highly respected in Northern Europe, and the sculptor Anne Koskinen. The visitors will be able to see the abstract works by Jon Pestoni at David Kordansky (Los Angeles), while the first-time exhibitors WHITE CUBE (London) will offer works by Imi Knoebel, Tracey Emin, and Christian Marclay.

The Neumarkt section will give space to emerging artists who will have their solo exhibitions, including Talisa Lallai (Galerie BolteLang), Flaka Haliti (LambdaLambdaLambda), Simone Gilges (KM Galerie), Dale Lewis (Choi & Lager), HG (Lucas Hirsch), Daiga Grantina (Joseph Tang Gallery), Caroline Wells Chandler (Roberto Paradise), and Christopher Chiappa (Kate Werble), among others.

Art Cologne 2016
The 50th edition Art Cologne 2016, occupy as much as 34,000 square meters of exhibition space inside the spectacular venue that is Koelnmesse, top-notch modern and contemporary art, paintings, works on paper, photography, video, sculptures, objects and graphics, Art Cologne will present over 200 leading international exhibitors, divided into four thematic sectors, accompanied by a supporting program of exhibition openings and events in nearby museums and institutions in the city. Art Cologne 2016 will also present special sectors titled New Contemporaries, Collaborations, and Film Cologne.

As a special event of the 50th anniversary of Art Cologne, the fair present FILM COLOGNE, an exhibition of arts films, curated by Philipp Fürnkäs. The show encompass an overview of the medium’s most creative products over the past five decades. For each decade there two works that highlight them and the historic production and development of the moving image in the Rhineland.

Highlights
Art Cologne 2016 invites approximately 200 international galleries to showcase painting, sculpture, photography, prints, multiples, installations, performance and moving image art in the city of Cologne, cultural center of the Rhineland region and beyond.

Contemporary art (Hall 11.2) will host participants such as Blain | Southern, Daniel Buchholz, Hauser & Wirth, Nosbaum & Reding, Galerie Perrotin, David Risley Gallery, Thaddaeus Ropac and David Zwirner.

Pearl Lam Galleries will be the only gallery from Asia to participate alongside 88 other galleries in the Contemporary Art section in Hall 11.2. The Galleries will showcase contemporary artists from around the globe to demonstrate its long-standing ethos of stimulating cross-cultural dialogue on contemporary art between China, the rest of Asia, and the West. The Galleries sector of the stand will strongly focus on Chinese abstract artists, whose works are rooted in Chinese philosophies and traditions such as ink painting and calligraphy. Differing from Western abstractionism, the work of these artists draws heavily from a cultural heritage of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. As well as exhibiting many artists who have been presented by Pearl Lam Galleries for many years, the Galleries will also be showing the work of Yuan Zuo for the first time.

In Hall 11.3, galleries founded in the 21st century, or better less than ten years old. Participating are Chert and Alexander Levy, among others. For the COLLABORATION sector, Art Cologne has teamed up with NADA fair, to create a program based on jointly planned projects between galleries, project spaces and artists from all over the globe. There, the visitors can find locals Ruttkowski;68, and Delmes & Zander, paired with Guido W. Baudach, for example.

NEW POSITIONS offers solo-presentations of outstanding young artists, each of whom was given additional 25 square meter area in the stands of the galleries representing them. The winner among the 21 artists will get a solo show at Cologne’s Artothek.

Art Cologne
The Art Cologne is one of the oldest art fairs in the world for contemporary art. It takes place every spring on the Koelnmesse site in Cologne-Deutz. It was launched in 1967 on the initiative of the gallery owners Hein Stünke and Rudolf Zwirner as the “ Cologne Art Market ” in Gürzenich, Cologne.

Eighteen galleries took part in the first Cologne Art Market in September 1967. With 15,000 visitors and a turnover of one million German marks, the event in Gürzenich in Cologne was a great success. The organizer was the association of progressive German art dealers founded by the founding fathers Hein Stünke (Der Spiegel gallery), Rudolf Zwirner and five other colleagues.

In 1968 the fair moved to the more spacious Josef Haubrich Kunsthalle, which existed until 2001. Additional galleries were admitted, including from abroad, in order to prevent a competitive event with international participation in neighboring Düsseldorf. In 1974 the fair, called Cologne Art Market from 1970, moved to the Rheinhallen in Cologne-Deutz. The organization was transferred to the Cologne fair company. In 1975 the name of the fair was changed to “International Art Market” (IKM). For the first time, the Art Cologne Prize was awarded in cooperation with the Federal Association of German Galleries (BVDG)awarded. The fair took place alternately in Cologne and Düsseldorf. In 1984 the fair was given a new name for the last time: the IKM became Art Cologne, which has only taken place in Cologne since then.

In 2007 Art Cologne was postponed from the traditional autumn date to spring. Cologne Fine Art, also launched by today’s organizer Koelnmesse, will now take place in autumn. The director of Art Cologne has been the US art dealer Daniel Hug since 2008. He succeeded Gérard Goodrow, who had been in office since 2003.

The “Art Market Cologne” has had competition in its own environment since the beginning of 1967. As all galleries that applied were never allowed to take part, there were always alternative offers in the context of Art Cologne: 1967 “Demonstrative” Cologne, 1968 “Prospect 68” Düsseldorf, 1969 “Neumarkt der Künste” Cologne, 1971/72 “Internationale Art and information fair “Düsseldorf.

In 1992 the Cologne gallery owner Christian Nagel launched the counter-fair “Unfair”; In 1995, Nagel was one of the co-founders of the Art Forum Berlin, an expressly competing event. ART.FAIR has been establishing itself as a counter-fair since 2003. In 2007, three more new art fairs started at the same time: the “List Cologne”, the “Tease Art Fair” and the “dc duesseldorf contemporary”.

In 1994 the Society for Modern Art at the Museum Ludwig awarded the Wolfgang Hahn Prize, named after the collector and chief restorer of the Museum Ludwig, for the first time during the fair. In 2006 Rudolf Zwirner, co-founder of Art Cologne, received this award.