Keeping Up With Milano's Art: March 2023 Issue
Throughout the past issues of Keeping Up With Milano’s Art we have touched upon museums, galleries and other emerging project spaces in our city, but as April, Art-Week and MiArt are approaching I think it is about time to touch a sore point: Art Fairs!
Hated by many, loved by rich milfs: art fairs in the past decade have been at the center of some disputes in the art system. Now, just to very quickly clarify, what is exactly an art fair? If I had to be an asshole, I would say it is the department store of the art world.
If I had to be formal, I would say art fairs are a crucial, structural element of the art system: a moment in which a great number of galleries - selected by a committee - come together to show and sell the works of the artists they represent. Their temporary architecture epitomizes French anthropologist Marc Augé’s concept of ‘non-places’ – the transient, sterile, identikit spaces of supermodernity that will most likely leave you with a general sense of burn-out. And the cheap glasses of wine won’t help.
Whether for annihilating the ‘aura’ of art – to speak in Benjamin’s terms – or for forcing galleries to keep up with slightly unsustainable business models (fyi: galleries are asked to pay up to €800\m² at some famous fairs), the dynamics of art fairs have been criticized by many.
Take The Art Fair Story: A Rollercoaster Ride by M. Gerlin, which highlights the gatekeeping power of art fairs and their sustainment of the star system. But you know, time is money and collectors have lots of money but not as much time, so gathering all the galleries in one place is a very convenient compromise.
I - personally - do not despise art fairs at all, I find them fairly exciting, they let you have an exhausting but fairly comprehensive look at the most updated art market scene. As a broke college student, you get to see the works of dozens and dozens of galleries from all over the world that you would never otherwise see, all in one single venue.
The three main art fairs in Italy are Artissima in Torino, Arte Fiera in Bologna and our MiArt in Milano. MiArt 2023 will take place from April the 14th to the 16th, so you’re early warned this time! I highly suggest all our readers to check out MiArt this year, you’ll see really whimsical characters wandering around and … 169 galleries’ booths!
Actually, the art fair season in Milan was already opened in March with two other smaller fairs that I had forgot to warn you about in the last issue, oopsie.
Both took place in SuperStudio Maxi location. We first had (UN)fair in early March, which stands for ‘unexpected art fair’ … to me it was just unexpectedly bad. No, seriously, it was quite disappointing: poorly made Jeff Koons’ baloons copies here and there, cringe-y Mickey Mouse pop art and so on.
But sometimes it is good to see some bad art, it sophisticates your eye by contrast: we are always used to see great masters and highly selected artists that sometimes we forget what makes them so worthy.
On a sweeter note, amongst that chaos, I spotted a super cool, young artist called Vlad Ogay represented by a certain Cut Art Gallery from Latvia, check him out if you like some desecrating religious art declined into pop materials.
Then, later in March, Mia Fair, the contemporary photography fair, followed the disputable (UN)fair, and the quality was definitely on another level. From photo-reportage, fashion shooting to photography purely as an art language, Mia Fair really gathered a miscellaneous corpus of galleries that underlined the versatility and multifacetedness of this medium, helping photography in positioning itself as an art form as respectable as those shown in MiArt and other traditional visual art fairs.
PS. for the passionates about photography: I also want to point out the opening of a new space called LAB 1930 in the Lodi area dedicated to the most contemporary languages of photography. I haven’t been yet, maybe some will be soon on this format.
Staying on the topic of upcoming Milanese art fairs we now finally get to the cool part of this month’s issue. I like to use our platform of B&A to promote what goes on outside the blockbuster and mass radar, what moves in the underground and what is slowly emerging in the experimental art scene.
If almost everyone already knows MiArt, maybe few already knew about Rea! Art Fair. Art Fairs are a complex sector to penetrate which is why I was immediately captured by this new initiative. I had the chance to interview Marina Rybakova, a super young entrepreneur who made of her vision a reality. Without spoiling too much from our conversation I wanted to point out a couple of aspects about this fair I really admire.
First, it somehow re-thinks to a certain extent the classic business model of art fairs: by overcoming galleries it directly selects and represents artists, allowing emerging figures who may not yet have a stable gallery covering their back to enter the art market.
Secondly, I had the impression while speaking with Marina that the selection and scouting process was mostly focused on the single art practices and their resonance with our contemporaneity rather than their marketable value, which is what mostly drives the corpus of works on sale at major art fairs.
Finally, by taking place in Fabbrica del Vapore, a cool reconverted venue near Cimitero Monumentale –rather than in the classic, aseptic, and franchised fair venues – it leaves some well-deserved dignity to the works displayed while still being a commercially oriented event.
Last but not least, we can finally witness a fully female team carrying a project, and here in B&A we love to subvert the industry male dominance
NB: the deadline for the Open Call for artists for the next edition of REA! Fair is on the 6th of April, so if you are an artist yourself or any of your friend is, this is the good chance for you to be a good broker of the art system and spread the voice!
Now let’s get inspired and dig deeper into Rea! Art Fair in conversation with its director and co-founder Marina Rybakova.
What made you decide to start a new art fair in Milan? Did you perceive a gap in the art market? Some under-representativeness of a portion of the art scene?
It was during my master’s studies when I saw an opportunity to introduce a fresh perspective to the art scene by showcasing the work of artists who are still not represented on the market, either because overlooked by the system or because they still are taking the very first steps in their art career.
Finding partners in crime was extremely easy, and soon enough we put together a team willing to start working on the project, which happened to be born in February 2020 right before the covid-19 pandemic unfolded. Our common goal was to create a platform that would give these artists the opportunity to showcase their work to a wider audience and attract new collectors, while at the same time bringing diversity to the art scene in Milan. By doing this, we hope to not only promote the artists and their work but also contribute to the growth and development of the art market as a whole and be the active agents of this change.
Speaking about the corpus of works on display: do you collaborate with galleries or do you prefer to scout artists singularly? And when it comes to single artists, what is your criteria of selection and to what extent does it collide with your personal taste in art?
The original concept of the fair was a fair with no galleries, by hosting independent emerging creators who apply to exhibit. Our curatorial approach is a combination of scouting individual artists and working with them to create a unique curate exhibition. The selection criteria is focused on finding emerging artists who are pushing the boundaries of their craft, creating innovative and thought-provoking works that challenge traditional notions of the space, think outside of the box, and resonate with the current social and political landscape.
Our aim is to promote diversity, inclusivity, and artistic excellence. As a grassroots project, we believe in taking a bold, fresh, and dynamic approach to contemporary art, and this reflects in the selection of works that we choose to display.
