Exclusive interview with Oriana Schwaan, FIAC's Show Manager

My name is Oriana Schwaan.  I’ve been FIAC Show Manager for three years, at the beginning of May it will be four years already. FIAC is the International Fair of Contemporary Art. There’s not only the Contemporary Art there, but also the Modern Art and Design galleries. This year it will be the 38th FIAC that will take place in the Grand Palais in October, the third week of October.There are several criteria of FIAC selection. Here I should explain a bit the internal organization. FIAC is headed by Jennifer Flay, FIAC director, with whom I work a lot. We don’t have a right to vote; it means that the galleries are selected by the Selection Committee composed of both Modern and Contemporary Art galleries. We have eight members in the Committee, French and International. It’s them who select the galleries that have the right to vote.
We don’t have the right to vote, however we are there to guide them sometimes, if we had seen an artist in a gallery that we found interesting and of high quality. Our role is more like a role of a mediator, to inform them about this gallery that is no longer working with that artist, even if they are professionals that know the market, the dealers and the artists perfectly. What we look at is the real work of the gallery during the year. There’s no need to have a career of thirty years as we have some galleries that exist for one year only and they take part in FIAC. This is not a problem, because once again it’s the question of the presentation and interaction, of what is happening today on the market. A Fair is also and especially a crossroad and an indicator of what’s happening and we offer a range of what’s happening at international level in Paris. Indeed, at a certain moment the Contemporary Art was very speculative. But it was rather several years ago, three, four, five years ago. There was that big phenomena during the Freeze Art Fair in London, with all the yuppies of the City that came to buy artworks during the vernissage with Kate Moss, that was crazy and then we really talked about speculation as well as about the collectors from Asia who buy at the auctions and even now they buy sometimes without knowing the name of the artist, of his work. And there was also the speculative side with all the “advisors”, the art advisors, we saw that they were everywhere. Precisely because of the crisis that wasn’t the first and the last neither we’d realized that we weren’t in the speculation.It’s the same phenomena as when we talk about “new-riches”. People who have some knowledge, areal love for the art will not buy something speculative. It’s the same thing as when we buy a house or any other work of art we buy it for a reason. And when we buy the art, especially the Contemporary art, we think about something that we like and not about the investment that it’s going to be. The emerging places from the artistic creation’s point of view, places that are really on the front of the stage, it’s the South American and Mexican Art. The creation there is very rich, not only at the contemporary art that have big modern artists that everyone may not know. But they really have a quality of a modern artist, they have their own modern area, and their contemporary creation is really impressive. I can name some artists that everyone knows such as Damián Ortega, Gabriel Kuri, Gabriel Orozco, or artists like Ernesto Neto.They really have legitimacy. We realize that now there are more and more galleries that are opening to Mexico, to the South America (Brazil or Argentina), and the fairs do the same. For example, this year is the first time when Rio hosts its own fair of contemporary art. So, this place is very interesting and it didn’t stop developing neither, there are actually very important taxes. The problem is to import. And when we visit the private collections at the collectors’ we realize that there are a lot of artists, Mexican or South American, and less international artists because they have a real problem, because they have a possibility to buy but the problem is to bring the artworks. It costs so much, it’s very difficult for them to buy so many international artists as they want. But there’s a mutual use that was made with the galleries that were united in an Art galleries committee, and that decided to invest together, because that poses a big problem to them also to contact the state and to work with the state to reduce taxes. We haven’t finished talking about the South America, about the artists as well as about the collectors because the day when the taxes will be reduced there will be a wave of the collectors from the South America and Mexico that are already very present because there are big collectors there. But there will be even more and, moreover, these collectors will at last have a possibility to buy as they want it and to bring the artworks to their homes.  If I had to advise a friend I’d talk about one of my favorite artists that I appreciate a lot, and also about the gallery: Andreas and Julia Schleicher and Lange  that opened a gallery in Paris several years ago and especially to look at the works of Evariste Richer.

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