Tag: #artgallery

June 14, 2020

Social distancing – Week 11: The state of our lives

In the past weeks, we saw people dying from a new virus. We locked ourselves in our homes and started wearing masks to protect us and our beloved. We started working remotely, and everything went digital. We met on Zoom and had virtual dinners with friends. Exhibitions and art fairs have been converted into VR. Private views happened online. Museum collections have been made accessible to the public online. Gallerists, artists, critics, and collectors talked on live streams. Podcasts and online Yoga sessions boomed. Many of us lost their jobs. Many of us have been furloughed. Nearly two million people claimed Universal Credits. Air transport has been stopped, and planes grounded. We pledged for the universal basic income. We mourned for the killing of George Floyd. “Please, I can’t breathe” reached the ears of the whole world but the ones of his murderer, the policeman Derek Chauvin. Rage stirred up our hearts. We flooded the streets to protest in support on BLM and against systemic racism. We tore down colonialist monuments of slave-traders. City officials boarded up monuments in London to prevent further damage. Far-right supporters arrived in London to counteract BLM protesters. Protecting British monuments was their pretence. “All lives can’t matter until black lives matter”. We have been alone but together. Parks are full of litter and oceans of plastic. Climate change and global warming are still happening. Our planet is still in an emergency. Now we are preparing for the reopening. Lockdown rules have been relaxed. From Monday, some art Galleries will open again by appointment only. We keep using masks. Planes are still mainly grounded. Anyone entering the UK has to self-isolate for 14 days. France closes its borders to Britons reciprocally. BA, Easy Jet, and Ryanair combined to sue the government over the quarantine. The country GDP reached its lowest record in history (-20% in April). Recession is knocking. Brexit trade meetings are ongoing. Turmoil is the state in which we live.

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April 14, 2020

Social distancing – Week 3: “Stay at Home” & [The Art Happens Here] by Annka Kultys Gallery

screenshot of Surface Collider (23032020), 2020, by James Irwin. Featured in week 1 of “Stay at Home” at AKG

At the beginning of April, Annka Kultys Gallery – a commercial gallery based in East London founded by Annka Kultys in 2015 which represents artists working in the digital sphere – launched a new online platform, [The Art Happens Here]. The platform will showcase “Stay at Home”, a new exhibition of digital art made in response to the Coronavirus pandemic. As with many other galleries, soon after the lockdown announcement in March, AKG switched its exhibition programme to a digital viewing room. However, [The Art Happens Here] is an online project on its own which extends beyond the existing gallery programme. The new platform opens up, as written in AKG newsletter, to “online projects of any artist interested in the internet as place of production and distribution.”

[The art happens here] is an important development in the gallery’s evolution, one that not insignificantly mirrors the evolution of artists’ practices and indeed art itself.

Every Sunday during the lockdown, “Stay at Home” showcases a new artist who investigates the pandemic situation. The artists are selected through an open call, and the exhibition is free and open to everyone (you can access through [The Art Happens Here]). Over the weeks, new posts are added so that, through solo presentations, “Stay at Home” becomes a group show. The idea is not new to AKG. In fact, presenting collective exhibitions through one-week solo shows is a familiar format to Annka Kultys who, the past winter, opened “Cacotopia 04” (11^th Jan – 15^th Feb 2020), the fourth edition of the gallery’s annual survey of leading emerging artists in the contemporary art space. Like “Stay at Home”, also “Cacotopia” four editions are group exhibitions presented in the format of solo shows allocated to a single artist every week.

week 3 AKG Instagram story 1 of 2 – Open Call

Whereas the two projects are similar, they are not identical. In fact, “Cacotopia” lasts four weeks and consequently showcases four artists only. While “Stay at Home” will present a new artist each week the lockdown goes on. Hopefully, these will be just a handful of weeks, but as we can see from other countries, the lockdown could last 10 weeks or more (i.e., Italy is in its 7^th week and the lockdown has just been extended for another month. Now planned to end early May 2020). Therefore, by continuing over time and presenting more artists, there is potential that “Stay at Home” will become a much bigger and more articulated project than its older brother “Cacotopia” and could even serve as new digital art database.

screenshot of Social Distancing Portraits, 2020, by Adad Hannah. features in week 2 of “Stay at Home” at AKG

On one side, the group exhibition format of single-artist-presentations allows “Stay at Home” to be identified as a creature of Annka Kultys Gallery progressively establishing the gallery signature. On the other side, the gallery is not only doing a great act of gallantry by giving a chance to ‘any’ artist to be exhibited by a commercial gallery but also providing a platform, namely [The Art Happens Here], where art made during the quarantine can be seen by the people.

Ah! and if this is not enough, all the gallery benefits of the sold works will be donated for Coronavirus research!

week 3 AKG Instagram story 2 of 2 – Open Call

March 31, 2020

Social distancing – Week 1: How König Gallery tackles COVID-19

While art galleries and museums around the world were announcing their temporary closure due to the Coronavirus outbreak, on Friday 13th March 2020, I visited my last exhibition before the lockdown. I live in London – officially, the UK was still ‘business as usual’ at that time and until Tuesday 22^nd March – and the show was “Among the Trees” at Hayward Gallery, a group exhibition about nature and trees showcasing the works of thirty-eight contemporary artists. On that same day, König Gallery (Koenig Galerie), founded in Germany in 2002, announced the temporary closure of their venues in Berlin and London. Now, with its physical spaces shut, how is the gallery managing to keep its audience engaged? Almost instantly after the announcement, the Gallery started leading online tours of their shows in Instagram which quickly developed into the 10am Series.

The 10am Series is open to everyone to join via Instagram on @koeniggalerie and take place twice a day at 10am CEST and 10am EST, which is 3pm CEST. These are live conference calls between the Berlin gallery owner, Johann König, and artists worldwide. At the end of each session, there is the Q&A section through which the public can interact. There are two types of sessions. In the early session, Johann König speaks with the gallery represented artists, discussing their practices, and sharing thoughts on how the future could be when the situation resumes to normal life. While the later session is an open call in which the gallery owner leads random studio visits of artists who join the call in real-time. The style is informal, allowing conversations to be spontaneous and, at times, even funny (after all, who wants to experience art and cry?).

After having watched a few LIVE sessions, I had the fortune to speak with Johann König over the phone and discuss the idea behind the project. He explained to me how the gallery closed its spaces and opened up in social media to keep reaching its audience and fulfil the need for connection, now felt stronger than ever. Clearly though, with the 10am Series, König Gallery is doing something more than just keeping its Instagram profile active with news about their artists and exhibitions. In fact, and as König explained to me, starting from the proposition that art is about the physical experience, the Gallery is committing to offer that sought after experience to its public allowing people to participate in the direct communication. The 10am Series facilitates an open dialogue between not only the gallerist and the artist on call but also with the public who can interact during the Q&A section.

As galleries and cultural organisations around the world had to shut their physical spaces, they have turned to their digital presence. This unprecedented situation allows them to break the standard rules and test new grounds by experimenting with the full potential of social media. What König Gallery is doing with Instagram demonstrates a robust civic commitment towards both its audience and represented artists. In my opinion, aside this being a great way to kick off the day with some art and ideas, the 10am Series should be a source of inspiration for the whole art world and its future.

As Instagram is offering the videos for 24 Hours only, you can watch older sessions on König Gallery YouTube-Channel.