“Highlights at Art Cologne have included Damien Hirst’s shark in the early ’90s,” says Daniel Hug, thinking back on some of the fair’s great moments. Another: “Rene Block sold ‘The Pack’ by Joseph Beuys, the big VW Bus with the wooden sleds, in 1970 for the record price of $110,000.” Hug, who has been the director of Art Cologne since 2009, is clearly focused on capturing the spirit of those glory days. Indeed, one of his first moves on taking up the post was to rebrand the fair with its retro logo and slogan, “Internationale Kunstmarkt” (International Art Market).
Now in its 47th edition, the fair may no longer be the preeminent market it once was, but quality has been consistently on the rise in the years since Hug took over, and 2013 looks to be no exception. Two hundred galleries from 25 countries have descended on the Koelnmesse with engaging displays like Helga de Alvear’s booth of works by Angela de la Cruz and Santiago Sierra; Moeller Fine Art’s array of Lyonel Feininger, Otto Dix, Marcel Duchamp, and Heinz Mack; and Corbett vs. Dempsey’s booth based on Duke Ellington’s passport.
Several structural changes to the fair have been introduced this year. Most noticeably, the preview is taking place two days later than in the past, and sales will continue through Monday night, making the fair one day shorter overall. “I’ve wanted to shorten the fair for two years now,” Hug says of the change, noting that 80 percent of galleries he surveyed last year agreed with the proposal. “Art Cologne used to have a Monday,” he continues. “It was sort of a professional day, where a lot of deals would happen between galleries and diehard collectors could come back and really take advantage of few people being in the aisles.” Entering the Messe, visitors will note the absence of Hug’s signature Kunsthalle-style show, which in past years featured artists like Dieter Roth and Panamarenko, and which has been replaced by an exhibition of pieces from the video and time-based art holdings of the Dusseldorf collector Julia Stoschek located in the disused, gold-ceilinged and wood paneled Messeklub (convention center restaurant) from the ’70s.
“It’s one of the things I’m most excited about,” Hug says, “and it’s actually two-fold: on one level it showcases a major private collection at the fair, and on another it’s a precursor to a new sector of the fair in the same space called VidCologne, which will launch next year.”
He adds, “I want to introduce an element similar to New Positions,” a section of the fair for galleries to show single works by emerging artists, “but for experimental, video and new media art. That will be a combination of a lounge with daily screenings and 5 to 20 small additions to bigger gallery booths strictly for moving image art.”
Another unofficial precursor to this new section of the fair can be seen at the Berlin gallery KOW’s booth, where a film program runs daily from noon to 8 p.m. It features Tobias Zielony’s“The Letter,” 2012, which was shown at the KW Institute of Contemporary Art last fall; Clemens von Wedemeyer’s“Muster,” 2012, created for last year’s Documenta; and works by Barbara Hammer, Santiago Sierra, Michael E. Smith and others.
Unchanged, however, is the special outdoor sculpture presentation on the steps to the Messe’s entrance, which has featured Paul McCarthy and He Xiangyu in the past two years. Berlin-based painter and installation artist Katharina Grosse takes up that space this time around with one of her signature Styrofoam sculptures, “Untitled,” 2012.
The New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) is back for a second year with a slightly curtailed number of galleries, from 33 in 2012 to 24 this year. “Maybe I overestimated people’s enthusiasm for young art. We had 79 young galleries between NADA and the New Contemporaries,” says Hug. “But I also think it might have just been too new last year. This year both are smaller,” he notes, adding that the New Contemporaries section, which features galleries founded since 2000 in 30-square-meter booths, has also been cut back to 37 galleries from a high of 46.
The fair feels more international and brighter than those of recent years, with more space between works and thought given to curation, especially on the first floor. Though it would still be wrong to call Art Cologne cutting edge, that’s never been the point. As Hug puts it, “From the beginning, I’ve said that I don’t want to be cool. It’s not the job of an art fair to be cool. I want to focus on good art and on quality. There is a lot of great art out there that’s really uncool: trends disappear.”