Bernhard Bischoff of Galerie Bernhard Bischoff, Bern, talks about the gallery’s program and its projects, and the art scene of the capital of Switzerland, Bern (the Kunsthalle Bern was very famous at the end of the sixties with curator Harald Szeemann). Video art is very important for the gallery, together with Galerie Henze & Ketterer and Carola Ertle and Günther Ketterer the gallery runs the project “videokunst.ch”. At Preview Berlin Bernhard Bischoff presents a video piece by Andrea Loux (studied in Bern and Berlin with Rebecca Horn). The other artists the gallery presents at the fair are Beat Brogle, Ruth Buck, Reto Leibundgut, Marius Lüscher, Kotscha Reist, and Dominik Stauch. Preview Berlin, September 29, 2006.
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CreativityTranscript
00:00 We are back at Preview Berlin Art Fair. We are at the booth of Bernhard Bischoff.
00:06 Bernhard, perhaps you can tell us a little bit how it is going?
00:10 Yeah, it's going well. It's really amazing when we compare to last year.
00:15 Last year there was a lot of interest, but now really there are buyers here, collectors here,
00:21 and we are pretty happy to be here and to meet those people.
00:25 Last year they bought a little bit, but this year it's better.
00:31 Yeah, it's better.
00:32 A lot better.
00:33 That's great.
00:34 Yes, perhaps you can tell us a little bit about your gallery, about the concept of the gallery.
00:39 When was it founded?
00:40 It was founded at the beginning of 2002. That means we are a little bit more than four years now gallery work.
00:48 It's a young gallery. We started in Thun, that's a very small city near Bern.
00:54 We moved now one and a half years ago to Bern, in larger spaces, near from the Kunstmuseum,
01:02 really in the center, in the heart of Bernese art scene.
01:06 For us it's great to be there.
01:08 Our program consists of young Swiss art, 50% and 50% international art.
01:17 For us it's almost European art. We specialize a little bit with Germany, France, Great Britain, something like that.
01:29 The Bern art scene, you told, can you tell us a little bit about that?
01:33 Well, you know, Bern is the capital of Switzerland and no one knows Bern,
01:38 and all the people from Zurich say it's small and it's boring and things like that.
01:44 But for us, for sure, we have an active scene, a small one.
01:49 We have some very important institution as the Kunsthalle, which was very famous in the end of the 60s with Harald Seemann and all those curators.
01:59 We have an art museum and we are very close to the art museum, only 50 meters from there.
02:04 That is specialized a little bit in, I would say, Swiss classical art, Meret Oppenheim, things like that.
02:14 It's a very nice collection also.
02:16 We have a very young art scene called Brocker.
02:21 It's a center for contemporary art production.
02:24 It's not only visual art, but it's music, it's actors, things like that.
02:30 It's a good scene and it's also 50 meters from us, so we have a good relationship.
02:35 And what we do for programming in Bern, we can't show only one medium or one special kind of painting or photography.
02:48 So what we need is a diversity of art.
02:52 And for us also very important is video art, even if you don't see it so much at the booth, because there is only one video work here.
03:02 I was the founder of the Bernese Video Art Festival and we still have an initiative called Videokunst.ch,
03:12 where we show video art and do a lot of video art.
03:15 That's important for us.
03:17 Perhaps you can take a look at the video?
03:22 For Berlin now we've chosen only Swiss artists, because I discussed a little bit with the organizers.
03:31 We are a Swiss gallery and for sure we want to show here young Swiss art.
03:38 This video piece is from Andrea Lu, a young Swiss artist.
03:45 She studied first in Bern, moved then to Berlin and studied here with Rebecca Horn.
03:50 And for sure it's always the professor, the teacher, who influences a little bit the whole work.
03:58 And it's this a little bit crazy situation in which she is interested.
04:04 For example, this video is called "Shortcuts 1 to 3".
04:09 And there are small pieces and each of them is a little bit really a short story, a crazy story.
04:17 You do not know what's going on, what's happening exactly.
04:21 But in the whole entity of this piece it's a crazy story she tells us.
04:31 It's about a woman with three dogs and all the things are related together.
04:39 The objects, the video, the photographs, the paintings she also draws.
04:47 And it's a very multimedia work.
04:53 You see now this piece "Shortcuts 1 to 3".
04:58 It's a very new one, it's from 2006.
05:03 Okay, then thank you very much for the presentation of your booth.
05:07 Thank you for your interest.
05:10 See you soon.
05:11 I hope in Bern or wherever.
05:13 The next art fair where we do is in Paris, "Show Off".
05:18 That's also an alternative fair and that will be the next one.
05:23 Okay, great.
05:24 Thank you.