Swizz Art Biz

In this latest episode of Swizz Art Biz x Löwenbräukunst, Tanya König sits down with Barbara Corti, who is a partner at Hauser & Wirth.

Corti started working at the gallery in 2005 when its only space was at Löwenbräukunst in Zurich. Shortly after, in 2006 she moved to New York, where she spent seven years working for 303 Gallery. In 2013, she went back to Hauser & Wirth to help it  open its first space in Manhattan’s Chelsea, which had become the spot to be for contemporary art galleries.

When the Covid pandemic spread throughout  the world in 2020, she decided to pack up and return to Switzerland. It was a decision that wasn’t easy but now makes perfect sense to her. She is now responsible for Hauser & Wirth’s galleries at Löwenbräukunst in Zurich and in St. Moritz. Corti tells Tanya about what she learned in the U.S., how Hauser & Wirth selects its new locations, and why everyone should drop into a gallery and just have a look around.

Make sure to subscribe to Swizz Art Biz on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Google Podcasts. And rating the podcast also helps it to be seen by others. You can also watch this conversation on YouTube.

Follow Löwenbräukunst and Swizz Art Biz on Instagram.

This episode was recorded at Tablecast by Christoph Soltmannowski.

AIA stands for awareness in art and We Are AIA is the name of a new nonprofit association founded by Martina Huber last year with its own space at Löwenbräukunst in Zurich.

The current show, The Mouth Is for Speaking, deals with the topic of human rights and ponders the question: What is needed to be able to speak or stand up? It includes pieces by Saudi artist Abdulnasser Gharem, which remembers Jamal Khashoggi—the journalist killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018—and Luke Willis Thompson, which was produced with the Black Lives Matter movement in mind.

Martina Huber is the first guest of the special series of Swizz Art Biz x Löwenbräukunst, where Tanya König, the founder of Swizz Art Biz, will speak with artists and insiders connected to the contemporary art center Löwenbräukunst in Zurich.

Follow Löwenbräukunst and Swizz Art Biz on Instagram. 

This episode was filmed at Tablecast by Christoph Soltmannowski and can also be watched as video podcast on YouTube. 

In 2006, Lucerne-based Galerie Urs Meile became one of the first Western galleries to establish itself in China. Their first space in Beijing was created by none other than Ai Weiwei, who was also one of the first Chinese artists the gallery represented. René Meile, the son of the gallery’s founder, is co-director and mainly responsible for the operations in Beijing. 

He spent the past 15 months in China and observed how the clientele shifted during the pandemic.

In this episode of Swizz Art Biz, he tells Tanya König why he tries to understand China through its art and culture rather than just geopolitics, why not every show is shut down immediately when showing sensitive content, and why it’s not always easy to work with Ai Weiwei. His next project? An exhibition by painter Wang Xingwei in Shanghai, set to open in April, when Meile hopes to return.

You can watch this episode as video podcast on YouTube.

Follow Swizz Art Biz on Instagram and on Twitter. 

This episode was recorded at Tablecast by Christoph Soltmannowski.

Nomad was founded in 2017 by Giorgio Pace and Nicolas Bellavance-Lecompte with the aim to be more exclusive and flexible than other fairs. While St. Moritz has hosted it on several occasions, Nomad, true to its name, has no fixed home, and over the past five years has also been held in Monaco, Cannes, and Venice. Next Tuesday the boutique fair will get underway in St. Moritz again through March 6. 

Nicolas Bellavance-Lecompte tells Swizz Art Biz host Tanya König that this year’s inaugural summer destination will be—drum roll, please—Capri. Talk about glam! But fear not Alpine enthusiasts, he says that the fair will return to the Swiss mountains next winter.

Nicolas Bellavance-Lecompte also tells Tanya how the committee picks their exhibitors, why they need to communicate their choices diplomatically, and why the noted Swiss critic and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist called Nomad the future of fairs. Listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

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British artist Keith Tyson spoke to Tanya König in 2018 about his art , technology, and his upbringing. Hauser & Wirth is now showing his drawings and paintings at 22 Street in New York. On this occasion, Swizz Art Biz is re-sharing this honest conversation with the Turner Prize winner, which was aired on CNNMoney Switzerland in 2018. 

The interview can also be watched on YouTube. 

Giorgia von Albertini is one of the youngest and most successful Swiss art curators at the moment. The 29-year-old started her career in the arts between her Bachelor and Masters degrees, when she collaborated with the renowned Swiss curator Bice Curiger, the renowned Swiss curator and co-founder of Parkett, who was only the third woman ever to curate the Venice Biennale in 2011.

"I simply wrote a letter to Bice saying how much I admired her work and asked if there was a way we could collaborate," von Albertini tells Swizz Art Biz. When listening to her, one can tell she is someone who dares to take initiative.

Even if it’s certainly not the best paid job in the art industry, she makes sure she gets paid for her work: “I always found that in a capitalist economy, no one should work for free and it was important to me to not devalue my work.”

So what does it take to succeed? "You need to love the work and put in the work."

Listen to this candid conversation with Giorgia von Albertini to find out her attitude towards work and why she wasn’t scared to collaborate with established figures in the art world including Swiss artist Not Vital. Plus, hear about her latest project, a monograph on Mexican artist Martín Soto Climént, which will be launched in Rome on February 3 at Karma International in Zurich on February 8, and then in London and Paris.

Follow Swizz Art Biz on Instagram and find the podcast host Tanya König here. 

Watch the conversation on Youtube. 

Produced at Tablecast Studio by Soltmannowski, solt.ch

Despite collecting digital and video art early on, Servais is not a fan of today’s much-hyped NFTs. “Most NFTs are just images, so don’t call it art,” he tells Swizz Art Biz. “Everyone can create an image: Kellogg’s does it. McDonald’s does it. But is Ronald McDonald art? It’s just an image.”

Listen to the full podcast or watch the conversation on YouTube to find out more.

Alice Bucknell is a North American digital artist based in London. She focuses her work around the topics of architecture, cryptocurrencies, the environment, and capitalism. Bucknell recently showed her piece “Swamp City” in Zurich which was also part of the Venice Biennale for Architecture this year. In this latest Swizz Art Biz podcast what motivates her work, why she went from being an art and architecture critic to becoming a digital video artist, why she boycotts the Ethereum blockchain, and how NFTs can make a difference. 

Noah Davis was one of the people behind the record-sale and has since been known as “the NFT guy at Christie’s.” He joins Swizz Art Biz from his office in New York and tells Tanya König how business has changed for the auction house since it opened up to NFTs. 

What does a buyer actually get when purchasing an NFT? Access to a community, Davis says. He also addresses the problem with lack of diversity in the NFT space, why he loves the artist FEWOCiOUS, and what to expect from the next Beeple auction. In that same auction, Christie’s will also sell their first NFT minted on the Algorand blockchain, which uses about 99.9 percent less energy than the Ethereum blockchain. 

It’s been over a year since I interviewed art dealer Dominique Lévy for CNNMoney Switzerland. During that 2020 conversation, Lévy gave a brutally honest assessment of how she saw art galleries and art fairs moving forward. The interview was picked up by  the international press, including The New York Times, Financial Times, Artnet, and The Art Newspaper. Even noted New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz Tweeted it out. Now I've done a follow-up interview with Lévy.