Art Forum Berlin– R.I.P.?
Ironically, after reporting less than a year ago how Art Forum Berlin had settled into a comfortable spot in the ever-growing art fair spectrum after 15 years, the fair suddenly ceased to exist. Or, according to the website, “is taking a break.” This news, first picked up while in Basel, was all the more surprising since the dates had been firmly embedded in my fall agenda. Apparently, the fair organizers who had sent the earlier “save the date” announcements forgot to inform their constituency of this minor development. (An oversight?) PREVIEW and Berliner Liste, the fair’s little sisters, will still take place this month along with the quasi-rival abc painting show, and it will be interesting to see how these events fare sans the mother ship.
Without going into the tiring provincial politics that lead to the fair’s demise or even pretending to be informed of the inside details, one can still speculate what this might mean for the city’s artscape. A question that comes to mind is “Does this city, with its fabled concentration of working artists and equally storied lack of a real collector base, really need an art fair after all?”
As anyone who spends time at art fairs knows, no matter how much an art fair is dressed up with exhibitions, experts’ talks, and other often interesting distractions, it always remains very much a commercial endeavor. And commerce is definitely not what Mayor Klaus Wowereit’s “poor but sexy” city does best. Thank god – at least as far as art in concerned.
While Berlin is radically cleaned up, developed, and even relatively corporatized since the wild 1990’s, there is still plenty of room for adventure, experimentation, and discovery. Just ask the organizers of Kulturbahn, a collaborative multi-media exhibition set in the Spreepark, an abandoned GDR amusement park in the eastern half of the city. (Motto: “Amusement parks can be ground for freedom thinking and cultural work. They can be landscapes of awareness.”) Twenty-two years after the fall of the Wall, such freaky, put-a-smile-on-your-face venues are still to be found in this town – and exploited by the creative types who, thanks to the dearth of commerce, can still afford to live and think there.
Spreepark, Berlin (photo Anthony Spinelli)
The Berlin Art Forum once provided a great jumpstart of hype for a long-isolated city. But with the capital’s art calendar more energized by the Gallery Weekend in May, perhaps the art fair has really run its course. And, although somewhat sad to close such a significant chapter, maybe this is not such a regrettable thing. Mal sehen.