Preview Berlin — Martin Rinderknecht

As founders and organ­is­ers of Pre­view Berlin—The Emerg­ing Art Fair, the four Berlin gallery own­ers Kris­t­ian Jar­muschek, Tobias Kut­tner, Rüdi­ger Lange and Ralf Schmitt are very pleased that the Pre­view Berlin has, in its third year, become a per­ma­nent fix­ture on the inter­na­tional art fair calendar.

Pre­view Berlin started out in Autumn 2005 as an ini­tia­tive of local gallery own­ers that aimed to close the obvi­ous gap that existed in the Berlin mar­ket for younger gal­leries to present them­selves. Up until then, there was no suit­able plat­form for Berlin’s vibrant gallery scene (with its many new gal­leries, co-operative gal­leries and project spaces) to present itself to the national and inter­na­tional mar­ket. Right from the start, the declared goal of the orga­niz­ers was to pro­vide a suit­able plat­form, com­bined with more pub­lic­ity that would show the wind of change blow­ing through Berlin’s gallery scene and the new forms of gallery prac­tice. The fair’s pur­pose was to become a pro­fes­sion­ally orga­nized one, and pri­mar­ily for local gal­leries and project spaces but also for young national and inter­na­tional gal­leries. The orig­i­nal aim was to pro­vide the basis for the emer­gence of a net­work that would encour­age exchange between the par­tic­i­pat­ing gal­leries as well as draw inter­na­tional atten­tion to the art metrop­o­lis of Berlin.

Nat­u­rally, every­one was aware from the out­set that these gal­leries and projects would only be able to par­tic­i­pate if the costs were low—an aspect that should not be under­es­ti­mated. And, this was the con­cept of Pre­view Berlin—the Emerg­ing Art Fair right from the start—to be non-commercial, an art fair cre­ated by gal­leries for gal­leries. For instance, any poten­tial income and profit should ben­e­fit the gal­leries with lower booth prices. This was a con­cept that imme­di­ately met with a great response and that ulti­mately resulted in 48 select gal­leries and project spaces from ten coun­tries tak­ing part in the first fair in Autumn 2005.

The time was right—the con­cept was met with much inter­est and imme­di­ate accep­tance amongst col­lec­tors, cura­tors and an art-interested pub­lic. This sup­port made the first Pre­view Berlin—the Emerg­ing Art Fair a resound­ing suc­cess. There were around 9,000 vis­i­tors and, in addi­tion to this, an exceed­ingly pos­i­tive media response. It soon became obvi­ous that this new fair was exactly what the estab­lished Berlin fair scene needed.

Due to great demand in the fol­low­ing year, the exhi­bi­tion space was extended by 450 meters and 53 par­tic­i­pants took part. A 30% increase in vis­i­tor fig­ures and con­sis­tently pos­i­tive sales fig­ures for the gal­leries reaf­firmed that Pre­view Berlin had found its place. Also in 2006, the fair’s goals were clear—Berlin’s most impor­tant young gal­leries should present them­selves together with a selec­tion of national and inter­na­tional up-and-coming galleries.

Now already in its third year, Pre­view Berlin—the Emerg­ing Art Fair is chang­ing its venue. The new loca­tion, a for­mer hangar at Berlin’s world-famous Tem­pel­hof air­port, brings the ideal of hav­ing a demo­c­ra­t­i­cally struc­tured fair one step closer to real­ity. The 4,200 meter, pillar-free hall enables a struc­ture in which all the par­tic­i­pants can exhibit under the same con­di­tions with equal-sized booths. Thanks to clear archi­tec­tural struc­tures, the atten­tion of the vis­i­tor will focus only on the gallery stand con­cept and the exhib­ited art.

The new fair venue also brings with it a small increase in the num­ber of par­tic­i­pants, with 57 gal­leries tak­ing part. It was decided that too many par­tic­i­pants would change Pre­view Berlin’s unique char­ac­ter. The per­sonal con­tact with all the par­tic­i­pants, the pro­fes­sional exchange and pos­si­bly the begin­ning of joint projects should always remain impor­tant aspects of the Pre­view Berlin concept.

This year, Pre­view Berlin is actively expand­ing its impor­tant net­work­ing idea with co-operations with two young art fairs: SWAB in Barcelona and Show Off in Paris. When select­ing fair par­tic­i­pants, the rec­om­men­da­tions of the part­ner fairs will be taken into con­sid­er­a­tion as selec­tion cri­te­ria. In this way, the fairs mutu­ally ben­e­fit from the exper­tise and knowl­edge the other has of their local gallery scene, thereby stim­u­lat­ing the exchange between the young gallery scenes of Berlin, Spain and France.

More than a third of the par­tic­i­pants come from Berlin and the rest of Ger­many this year. Eagerly awaited are, once again, strong rep­re­sen­ta­tions by young gal­leries from Switzer­land and new gallery addi­tions from the USA, Great Britain, France, Spain and Italy.

Berlin, once again, promises many sur­prises and dis­cov­er­ies this autumn.