AMERIKA was founded in March 2005 and is located in Brunnenstrasse in Berlin. Sebastian Klemm talks about the concept of the gallery, why the gallery is called Amerika, the reception of the gallery’s program at Preview Berlin, and the plans for the future. On display is work by Viktoria Binschtok, Göran Gnaudschun, Eiko Grimberg, Falk Haberkorn, Alexej Meschtschanow, Fabian Reimann, and Dirk Scheidt. Preview Berlin – The Emerging Art Fair, September 29, 2006.
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00:00 America was founded in March 2005 when we opened the space in Brunnenstrasse,
00:07 which is like one of the new gallery areas in Berlin.
00:11 We opened it last year and now I think we are about 9 or 10 galleries located
00:17 within just 400 or 500 meters walking distance actually.
00:22 It's an artist-run space that we try to run as professional as we can actually.
00:32 It's me, Sebastian, I'm the gallerist and I've got a colleague, Silvia.
00:37 We were found by the artist and a group of friends and we are friends with the artist.
00:42 So we decided in early 2005 that we could try probably to open the gallery.
00:47 The name "America" is actually an idea of one of the artists who approached me
00:55 and said "I just read this little prose, like a story by Franz Kafka, it's named "America".
01:03 And there's references to an artwork by Martin Kippenberger which is called
01:08 "The Happy Ending of Unhappy America".
01:12 So this is like the story behind it.
01:14 And we represent 20 artists from the Leipzig Academy who just finished or are about to finish
01:19 their education in sculpture installation and photography obviously.
01:25 A preview of Berlin Art Fair, are you happy with it?
01:29 Definitely, I mean we did it last year for the first time just 4 or 5 months after we opened our space.
01:36 And it was such an amazing success, it was really overwhelming because we never thought
01:41 that we were able to participate in an art fair after such a short time.
01:46 And so we decided to do it again this year, just with another mixture of artists.
01:51 But it's quite good, I mean curators are coming by and this is one of my aims actually,
01:58 to make the contact to curators because the art that we are showing is a bit more on the conceptual side.
02:04 It's not so easy to sell, you have to talk I think a lot more about it
02:10 because it's really like conceptual and it's not so easy to approach sometimes.
02:14 And so it was a success so far, but the fair is just on for 2 days.
02:19 Which artists did you bring to the fair?
02:22 We have like a mixture between 6 artists and it's Alexei Mechchanov for sculpture,
02:29 then sculpture and drawing Fabian Reimann, Göran Knautschuhn is straight photography.
02:35 Then in the back, conceptual artist Falk Haberkorn who works in the broadest sense
02:41 with everything that's based on the artist's role, like a very romantic feeling to that.
02:48 And he's doing photography, performances, sculptures and this is a drawing he just finished last week actually.
02:54 And then we have a small video piece by Eiko Grimberg together,
02:59 which goes very good together with Andreas Schulz's very fragmented, very kind of,
03:05 in the first hand very hermetic pieces, but if you see them together on the wall,
03:09 it's very narrative and it makes absolute sense.
03:12 So this is like, more like, and this is Victoria Binstock, I forgot her.
03:18 Yeah, it's more or less like an overview of what we have in the gallery.
03:24 Yeah, if you could tell us a little bit about this sculpture.
03:28 This is one of Alexei Meshchanov's newest works.
03:33 He's from the Ukraine, born in Kiev and came very early to Germany in 1985
03:40 and studied in Leipzig, actually in a photography class,
03:44 but he moved on to become a sculptor himself because he's got like an education in welding
03:50 and working with materials.
03:52 And his approach is more or less to find like forms and like, who are not so easy to describe.
04:01 It's like very, very hermetic as well, but very aesthetically.
04:05 And they have got a, on a sub-level it works very good in my taste.
04:12 And he's going to have a solo show in November this year in the gallery,
04:16 six or seven new pieces.
04:18 What are the plans for the future, art fairs, shows?
04:23 Next year we'll try to participate in Art Brussels
04:28 and probably apply for the Art Forum for Berlin and then we will see.
04:34 I mean, obviously everybody wants maybe to participate in the list in Basel,
04:40 but I mean, we're just one and a half years old and so we will wait and see actually.
04:45 So good luck here at the fair for the future and thank you very much for the interview.
04:49 Yeah, you're welcome.