With a enterprise mannequin primarily based on invite-only events and performances, a brand new itinerant industrial gallery debuts in Athens

The industrial artwork world is more and more desirous about fostering, or at the very least hinting at, a way of neighborhood—whether or not that’s via establishing coalitions between galleries or championing wider social causes. However whereas artists and their sellers are stepping ahead to steer this cost, the collectors who fund the trade are not often thought-about in such, nicely, collective phrases.

Enter Fortune Teller, a brand new enterprise that markets itself as someplace between an “peripatetic pop-up industrial gallery” and a “kunstverein,” (the German time period for an artwork affiliation), says its co-founder, the curator Denis Maksimov-Gupta. At its core, the gallery acts as a members’ membership that levels promoting exhibitions, and whose openings—intimate gatherings within the type of dinners and events—could be attended by invitation solely. Works are all pre-sold previous to the present’s opening to the collectors who type this world neighborhood, with an artwork buy sometimes being the value of entry. Present members vary from seasoned collectors to artwork world newcomers, Maksimov-Gupta says. He handpicks the group alongside together with his Fortune Teller co-founder Inga Bergen, a German digital well being skilled.

In fact, an artwork enterprise primarily based on exclusivity and festivity is hardly novel. However Fortune Teller is trying to carve out a distinct segment by appearing not solely as a industrial platform, but additionally as a social hub for likeminded collectors to connect with each other. “Exclusivity and democratisation should not essentially antagonistic”, Maksimov-Gupta says. “There are standards and parameters which make us be a part of particular social teams on the premise of shared pursuits, skills and capacities. With Fortune Teller, we intention to create one other locus the place individuals from totally different teams can shared new frequent house.”

Maksimov-Gupta just isn’t prescriptive as to what this frequent house ought to imply for the gallery’s collector-members. For some it might simply be a spot to find and purchase artwork, for others it may very well be a solution to meet like-minded individuals and construct friendships and inventive partnerships. However he hopes that the house will talk about ideas round futurity—whether or not in artwork, science or different fields—that underpin Fortune Teller’s curatorial programme. On this approach he conceives of artwork as a “social exercise”—an excuse to collect and talk about a broad vary of fascinating and urgent subjects.

Fortune Teller’s first exhibition, which opened earlier this month in Athens, is being hosted by two areas within the metropolis: the industrial gallery The Breeder, and the non-profit cultural centre, Keiv. Between them they’ve staged a solo present (till 1 October) of the Berlin-based artist David Bernstein, whose apply, which he categorises as “Judeo futurism”, considers existential questions round faith, historical past and queerness and the longer term. Exhibited are discovered object sculptures together with a Sixteenth-century oak sculpture of Jesus—which is an off-cut by the Vietnamese artist Danh Võ, in addition to ink drawings on paper.

On the opening, Bernstein gave an hour-long efficiency that concerned him singing a prayer in Yiddish. A lot of personal collectors flew in from throughout Europe—on the invitation of Fortune Teller—to attend the present and a dinner and social gathering that came about later that night. The gallery now plans to stage a second present of Bernstein’s work in New York.