ARTmART 16-21.11.2010 - Künstlerhaus

Team

ARTmART Wien: Christian Rupp eSeL
k/haus: Peter Bogner, Nadine Wille
cheapart: Georg Georgakopoulos, Dimitrios Georgakopoulos

Running parallel to the Artfair in Vienna in 2007, ARTmART demonstrated that under the right conditions it is possible to create an attractive market for contemporary art, aimed at those who have not yet started to buy or collect art.

ARTmART, an “exhibition with the characteristics of a fair” is a display of the potential of the young art scene and, at the same time a quite unusual artist-organized market. ARTmART reacts to and furthers the current rise in new types of buyers and people interested in art. Young artists, being frequently exhibiting while at the same time underrepresented on the international art market, face an economic gap. ARTmART kicks in with an attractive way of creating an exceptional market-situation. For a whole week each individual art piece is available for the same price of 80 Euros.

ARTmART is the art of seduction. The strategic staging of the ARTmART Exhibition – from its flirtation with the allurement of the spectacle to its substantial integration of established artists – hosted in a central location in Vienna creates a social meeting point for artist and public. Here artists, collectors, and the art-interested can readily talk about art. Aside from “fast cash” for artists the more substantial result is the sustained interest for art which ARTmART creates.

Without reducing connectivity to the established art market, ARTmART makes it possible for young artists with a “yet undeveloped” income to generate cash flow from their pieces through direct sales– for some artists, for the first time and often coupled with such a high volume. Established artists use ARTmART as a testing ground for new series or concepts, and to create with newcomers a self-confident, temporary communication platform.

As a networking forum ARTmART allows artists and collectors to engage directly in conversation. The direct sale of a low-priced piece of artwork serves as a fresh way to raise interest and gain new collectors. Through ownership of a piece, the exhibition is extended into the buyers own living room and the result is that interest for the artist and further works is established. ARTmART changes what might have began as a “bargain hunt” or a search for a decorative piece of artwork in many cases into real interest for the work of an artist. (This was validated after the last ARTmART exhibition by inquiries from buyers for months after the exhibition had ended, as well as the numerous studio visits that followed).

Through the tremendous public impact of the exhibition, ARTmART provides artists the opportunity to engage in dialogue about their work with people outside of familiar circles. ARTmART offers the chance for communication outside of regular discourse networks – and functions as a probe for one’s own work on the diverse spectrum of society. Because of the exceptional price of 80 Euros, “new audiences” are enticed to “test the waters” of contemporary art.

Outside of sales, artists can also trade works among each other and do so extensively. Because of its nature as a one week meeting point for artists, last year ARTmART helped to initiate numerous co-operative projects as well as international involvement and participation. Co-operation with the Greek CHEAPART-Gallery, whose concept was adapted for the Viennese ARTmART, is an example that the one week exhibition serves primarily to facilitate development and support for long-term non-institutional networks and structures. Via this catalyst the network surrounding ARTmART/CHEAPART can make a scope of young Austrian and international artists visible beyond the exhibition. Additionally it supports them with its micro-economy via the sales situation of the exhibition.

ARTmART culminates the open question of the economic situation of contemporary artists in a one week hands-on laboratory. It defines itself as an active symposium, in the sense that it is a real gathering of the actors concerned, making possible a unique type of eye to eye communication.

Within the microcosom of ARTmART a re-framing of those conventions takes place, that are surrounding the artists’ struggle to build acceptance and reputation or the pressures to continuously develop social connections, in the quasi fight for survival. Thus, these conventions and the intertwinement of art and power are made acutely apparent. The discussion of the economic side of contemporary art production is not isolated from contemporary practices. The topic is put into a new focus through the multi-layered exchange situation with the unusual market situation as back-drop. The flat hierarchy created within ARTmART by the universal sales-price and “St. Petersburg or Salon-Style Hanging” temporarily eliminates the conventions of the art system normally created by name or pricing differences for the duration of the exhibition. Restrictive market strategies and deliberate limitations of availability are contradicted in ARTmART by creating forms and ideas in multiples and series. The concept refreshes and updates the search for models of economic valuation of intellectual production.

ARTmART selfconsciously asks questions contrary to the status quo. It searches for new (economic) opportunities for young artists. Consequently not limiting itself to symbolic capital (a frequently encountered paradox when questions such as these are seriously dealt with within in the field of art). Within the communication process, from which art results as a social product, ARTmART offers the artist an independent economic and social platform Being a strategic Intervention with deliberately temporary character, ARTmART is strengthening the connectivity, economic autonomy and the spine of the artists.