Interview by Pietro Franesi,
Director of NY BIENNALE ART
1. What is the NY BIENNALE ART?
NYBA would like to cover a new space in New York art system.
NYBA is my idea, it is a project, it is a logo, it isn't Association, it isn’t a company.
2. What does "BIENNALE" mean?
Nowadays New York is considered the international capital of contemporary art.
New York still doesn't have an event that marks its supremacy in the field of contemporary art.
The NYBA is committed to fill this gap and call back to New York every two years the best of the international artistic production, the avant-gardes, and all those who tries to overpass the boundaries and between the arts, in particular the new artist’s generations.
3. Does the Show have a theme?
Yes, the title of this edition of the Biennale is ALL THAT IS SOLID MELTS INTO THE AIR.
The whole matter, during its creation, possesses a double nature: both particle and wave, depending on how you decide to measure them. The double nature of matter is more the result of the interaction with matter itself, than a sort of intrinsic property of a reality provided with an objective and independent existence.
“Within physical reality, virtual states are part of the kingdom of potentials, as they include the future empirical possibilities of the universe.”
There is a virtual invisible dimension, which directly influences the “ visible” material dimension in a way which is impossible to quantify completely . Till today the art criticism has studied, observed and subdued the visible part, the matter particle. Now we have to move to the virtual dimension (the wave).
The novelty of quantum physics does not reside in the consciousness of this influence then, but in the impossibility of controlling it: it is not possible to determine the quantity of disturbances due to the observer. The principle of indeterminism, which was discovered in 1927 by Heisenberg, states the theoretical impossibility of a precisely determining position and a momentum (speed) of a particle: the observation of one of the two elements will perforce influence the other one’s value.
This circumstance requires a deep revision, if not the abandon, of determinism and causality.
A new electrifying and exciting research that will have revolutionary effects on the contemporary art and in economics, philosophy, science and in our life.
NY BIENNALE ART will be the Manifesto of the Immaterialism.
Our mission isn’t and doesn't want to be commercial, but promotion of artists who develop the artistic research in this field.
What is the Immaterialism?
It is intended to propose a new commitment of artists and more generally of contemporary society, to overcome the material values (supremacy of the economy, of the determinism, of the casuality, of the globalization) with the immaterial one’s ( supremacy of sustainability, of uncertainty, of complementarity, of glocalization )
In sum man returns to the aim not the means.
4. Is this your first BIENNALE in NYC?
Yes, it is
5. What was the inspiration for your Show?
Contemporary art is a drug so it can depress and excite. It's an intelligent Prozac which attends to control ourself, to stimulate useful reaction to the “Big Brother, wich sometimes is a new billionaire or an International Finantial Found.
Art has lost his value of antagonist of vanguard and has accepted to embellish the dwellings of the new imperators, becoming a financial product.
All these things are archaic.
The Immaterialism will be the “Trojan horse”, to smash the system procreates and handles contemporary art.
Today the new competitors are immaterialism and materialism, as 50 years ago were communism and capitalism.
6. What makes your Show special?
The choice to select only artists who are researching. They are testing new languages beyond market. For example I invited a lot of german artists or however artists living and working in Berlin, because, for me, Berlin is the best place in the world to produce art like I intend it. When Berlin will get the awareness of being the most advanced and original artistic community of the planet can remove the supremacy of New York. Not only the money will decide the future of contemporary art. The money without ideas only creates disasters and monsters
The artists make any show special or anonymous
7. What is the connection, if any, with the “ Venice Biennale “ and the “ Florence Biennale ”?
There aren't connections. I went to “La Biennale di Venezia“ and I publicly want to congratulate new director Daniel Birnbaum, also I want denounce that, unfortunately, the best are called only when the budget is reduced.
The Chinese and Russian pavilion were very good.
However the event that has impressed me for quality, class, elegance and innovation was the installations of Uckaine’s Pavilion . An immaterial art jewl.
I selected a few artists abd curators by la Biennale di Venezia, as Lu Hao.
8. What are you trying to accomplish with the Show?
I want to propose to the market a more bright kind of administration of contemporary art, breaking the old cultural and commercial hierarchies.
9. Tell me about yourself , your background. Are you an artist, an art connoisseur, a businessman, or all of these? What in your background makes you, in your background, the right man to do this?
I began to collect art works in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Where I lived for 10 years, 1989-1999 as International Marketing Adviser.
I changed dollars in rubles to buy art, and so began this great passion.
Later I decided to take away from the international finance
My real schools were the Hermitage, the State Russian Museum, the State Tretyakov Gallery and the ateliers of many Russian artists.
In 2000 I was the owner of some Contemporary Art Galleries
In 2003 I began to study the NY art market and in 2005 , I opened my own NY1 art Gallery, at 515 West 25th Street, in New York.
Today, I'm managing the NY Biennale Art 2009.
I love to work with artists who search new expressive forms and contents, especially related to the immaterial values.
I believe in current revolutionary moment, effect of the crash between old values of the material development (business & blood) and new values of the immaterial development (sustainability and ethics). .
The art has been accomplice and backer of the old system.
Today I engage my full participation to this new phase of human history, immateriality and quality will prevail on materiality and quantity.
10. What are the genres in the Show? Will it encompass installations, performance art, the avant-garde et al.?
The important thing is the process, not the object. This is the message.
If we want a quality art which avoids the speculative bubbles we must select the artists who are working on the process, on the conception, on the concept.
Reward quality means to collect artists who produce little and are not reproducible
Also these artists will avail themselves of collaborators able to chip in visual art.
The artist will be more and more a collective and multidisciplinary entity.
11. Who are some of the featured artists?
We are came to 100 starting from 12000, but we haven't known the artists who are working for the gallery. There are a lot of great artists that we don't know yet. We are looking for them. This is our mission.
12. How did you select the artists for the Show? You have previously said that you want to include younger artists and more recent works in the Show. Why is this important to you?
We select the artist from the street and from Internet. I want to include younger artists and more recent works in the Show because we must go toward the future and not stop or come back, so we must consider the new ideas, the most fresh and innovative one’s.
13. Will be there many Italian artists? Why?
Many Italian surnames but they are American and Italian.
The problem isn't the passport but the DNA.
When you are Italian or European you have in your blood the DNA of Giotto, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Albrecht Durer, Rubens and so on.
Creativity is daugther of the history.
14. If, ideally, you could have your favourite artists in the BIENNALE, who would you want? Andy Warhol? Caravaggio? Rembrandt?
Rothko.
He put through the Renaissance art. He saw what there are were over the canvass, he lead us at an immaterial dimension where all that is solid melts into the air.
15. What will the venues be in NYC? What locations?
The works and the installations will be positioned in a lot of prestigious locations in all Manhattan, where people can easily access: Battery Park, City Hall Park, Washington Square, Waterfront 12th Ave. Chelsea, Union Square, East River Park, Grand Central, T. Warner Building, Penn Station, Bryant Park, UN and Central Park.
Many guerrilla art events.
16. What is your view of the NY art scene?
A lot of products, a lot of decorations, not much art.
The market has rewarded, and still rewards, the reproducibility, the technique, the object.
They used to buy art like they are buying tomatoes or stocks.
The costs are out of every market logic.
Rents, communications and transports are making hundreds of galleries shut down and a lot of artists run away from New York.
Chelsea is a desert. The new reality, Williamsburg or Bushwick are only fashions. They last for a month and then disappear.
Fairs are more and more expensive and don’t sell.
The party is over.
Contemporary art market must change or it will die.
NY is having problems, with money, with its nerves, but especially with ideas.
17. Do you consider NYC still the art capital of the world? What other art scenes do you think are important now?
NY today is the capital of contemporary art but if it doesn't change, it will lose the supremacy.
New actors are entered into the scene and want to be protagonists.
On the other hand, in the global village doesn't matter where you are, but who you are and what you are doing.
Two dates will remain in the art history
September 16th, 2008
Damien Hirst sells for $ 200 million at Sotheby’s, directly to the market
Goodbey Gagosian and White Cube
April 25th, 2009
Victor Pinchuk open his personal Museum with 200 works of Damien Hirst.
Now the collector, breaking the historical hierarchies, want to be recognized as the new princes, the artist has been set back, the main actor of the market is the collector.
The galleries and the dealer will disappear. The collectors demand a direct relationship with the artists.
The museums will have to become centre of artistic production of very high level, fairs have to focus on the artists.
From the object to the process, from the reproducibility to the uniqueness, from Prozac to “Brunello di Montalcino” , from NY to wire city, all that is a revolution which will change all the system of the art and more.
18. Do you have a special dream?
Yes, today I would like to explore with some artists a lay dimension of the immaterialism, starting from the new knowledges of the quantum mechanics. I think this way can overcome the historical breack from west to east, from Christianity to Islam and can be the new universal philoshophy.
