Or: Five months is not enough.

At the gallery dinner hosted by Barbara Thumm (link) at art forum Berlin (just after the opening of the exhibition of a huge work by Fernando Bryce (link)), Barbara came over and said to me: „I have been thinking about you a lot since yesterday and I came to the conclusion that when you decided to start collecting contemporary art, you haven’t actually changed anything. You’re still collecting science fiction. Not contemporary art.”

The night before Barbara had joined us for the first Independent Collectors Dinner, where I gave a report about my first five months of collecting. During the speech I mentioned my passion for collecting science fiction literature. And yes, maybe Barbara has a point.

(This is my dinner speech, by the way.)

My collection includes one work with a direct tie to a major science fiction work, namely Kris Martin’s “End point of Time Machine (H.G. Wells)”. Two other works have something to do with stars and the universe.

Barbara also said that the works I collect are very literary. Which would be true, had I bought Sven Johne instead of Kris Martin, although the works themselves would have been very different.

The easy way out is to quote Wilhelm Schürmann who says that you can only collect yourself. Looking at my fictious collection however, I realized that the reason why all my works bare a resemblance to science fiction is that when I have to decide between two works that will both ruin me, I’m more inclined to take the one with a link to science fiction. Kris Martin’s “13 Idiots” for example has nothing to do with science fiction at all. Is it still a literary work? I’m not sure.

Right there in that moment, Barbara had caught me off guard. Right now, with a night of proper sleep in between me and the fair, I think that my collection will develop further away from science fiction over time. Five months is not enough to leave familiar tracks. Still, her remark was a very useful and interesting one to ponder about.

Other than that, art forum Berlin was awesome. I will post a bunch of pictures of works I liked next week.

Or: The dinner that requires a speech.

I have been collecting contemporary art now for almost five months. Which seems to be reason enough to ask me to hold a dinner speech about it at the first Independent Collectors dinner. Fearing that some of the guests will tap into the blog, I will not let out too much.

Just to keep everyone comfortable: No powerpoint. No slide projector. No equipment. Just a few words really. And this:

For everybody who can’t attend the dinner in Berlin, I’ll prepare a small video of the speech in english, in case you’re interested. I will post it sometime next week when I’m back from art forum Berlin. I’ll be packing my things now, try to grab a few hours of sleep, the hop a plane and off to another art fair.

Enjoy the art fair season!

Or: This is about half an image.

Let’s wrap it up already, shall we? Frieze has been over for me for a week now and I still haven’t gotten round to do this. So here it comes.

London is hectic. As soon as I left the airplane and entered Heathrow, I could feel it. Everything and everyone seems to be in a rush. Even lampposts appear to be restless. Never mind, we soon entered the calm oasis of the frieze tent. Yeah, right. As if you would believe that one.

I had the pleasure of being with someone who had a VIP pass to the fair, so we got in early, just like all the other gazillion VIPs. It was FULL! As I wrote earlier, the first artwork I consciously looked at was “Avoid Safety” by Jonathan Monk. Which I did. But more about that later.

Apart from being crowded, frieze is well structured and easy to get around in. Being a complete amateur to the business, I couldn’t feel anything like a financial crisis affecting the atmosphere. It certainly didn’t affect the prices of the admittedly yummy sandwiches on sale from the conveniently placed catering booths. 5 quid for a bun? You can buy art at that price. At least if you’re happy with a “Poem” by Allen Ruppersberg. Which I was. For a while.

I mostly kept in the slipstream of Christian, who was ploughing through the fair at incredible speeds. No complaining, it’s awesome to switch into “tag-along-mood”, almost like a roller-coaster ride.

And then, at the booth of Sies + Höke Gallery from Düsseldorf, I encountered the works of Belgian artist Kris Martin. I liked the “Endpoint” series (see the last post). We looked through the portfolio and I was keeping my fingers crossed that nothing exciting comes up. Clocking in at just under 2000 Euros apiece the “Endpoints” are just within a price range where my enthusiasm can override all intelligence and accounting skills.

And of course something came up. Call me proud owner of the end point of H. G. Wells’ “Time Machine”. But I’m getting ahead of me. First, I left the booth to have a beer at the Sushi camp. Went back later to ask whether they could reserve that one (the painting, not the beer) for me until the next evening.

And of course I came back the next day to buy it. Now I have to wait until January for it to be sent. Blessing and curse of the art collecting business: Buy now, pay later. As if my budget would magically increase over the next couple of months. Did I mention that I’m really bad when it comes to money issues?

Anyway, now I’m looking forward to welcoming another “Point” in my collection. I have a lot of points now. If we leave the star-shaped ones aside (those in Lasse Schmidt Hansen’s x/°°), I now have 48.086 points. Rudolf Reiber’s “48.085” + 1.

I’m 31 years old now and it comes in incredibly handy that I have been preparing my parents for the last 20 years or so for this moment. My mother sort of accepted at some point that her son is utterly weird (but harmless). When she sees the art I’m buying she can now jot it down as: “That’s so typical for you.” Other than that, the art I’m buying is not exactly easy to explain to parents (in law) or to friends who think the PS1 is a predecessor of the PSP.

But that doesn’t worry me. There is no time for that. I need time to look at art, find out stuff, to learn things. It’s too interesting. Besides, I like it when people think I’m weird.

Now, I got all side tracked again. Let me just add that Zoo art fair was awesome as well. You should go to London when you get a chance next year. Maybe see you around.

Coming up next: art forum Berlin and Miami. And I promise again to take more pictures.

Edit: Alright then. Here is one from the oil tanks at the tate modern. We had signed up for the early morning tour like 20 other people of which only like 5 showed up. Thanks to the tate for a lovely morning!