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CastYourArt offers podcasts for people fascinated by art. The weekly published video- and audio-episodes are windows to the world of art: its ideas, institutions, and actors, its economics, contradictions, and its ups and downs.CastYourArt-Contact

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CastYourArt Video- und Audioepisodes

… this is Eugen Lendl’s answer to the question about what that special quality is that predestines one for the occupation of the gallery owner. However, “most of them originate from rich parents”, he says.

About the development of the gallery. Part 1

[11:54 min] download for: mobile, computer and iPod | send feedback

About the relation between artists and galery owners in time. Part 2

[13:29 min] download for: mobile, computer and iPod | send feedback

As a gallery owner, Eugen Lendl has experienced the limits of the handling of art, the artists with special gifts, and the impressive consistency and power of expression, which enriches his life. He is also familiar with the commercial aspects of art and its value, which translates into a lasting relationship with the customer.

He has been in the business for forty years and he represents both contemporary international and local artists in his gallery program: Thomas Baumann, Herbert Brandl, Helen Chadwick, Manfred Erjautz, Werner Reiterer, Hubert Schmalix, Markus Wilfling, and Erwin Wurm, to name a few. He has been with some of the artists since their beginnings. In the last years, the emphasis of his art has been in sculpture, as well as painting. The areas of interest vary. According to Lendl, he develops along with his artists.

Our discussion with Eugen Lendl gave us insight into a seasoned gallery career: evolving with the times, getting older, being aware of the newer generations, but in addition, developing the ability to observe those trends from a distance and still retain the passion to make an impression. The interview became a review of the “now” factor: “There’s always a few good crazy ones” who promote and feed the art trends in the city. “I, myself “, says Eugen Lendl, “am one of them.” (wh)

In the art world, one thing leads to another—this is the principle by which Hans Knoll began his career as an art dealer, which remains his guiding principle up until today. Knoll began in the early 80s with a space, a weekly dinner among friends, artists, and accompanying guests, and the possibilities that arose from this set-up led to exhibitions, performances, and music. These events were at the time more along the lines of occasions for bonding. However, they eventually turned into serious gallery events and the subsequent realization that one must expand beyond Vienna in order to truly develop in the art world.

In the first half of the 1980s, the young art dealer was already getting involved with the art world in Hungary. He founded an artists’ co-op in Budapest as a kind of communist counterpart to his gallery and thereby set himself apart in the art world from the surrounding East European countries. When the door between the East and West was opened, it became apparent to Knoll that his position would remain relatively neutral. He curated exhibitions that mediated both sides and by the beginning of the 1990s, he realized that the sudden massive interest from the West in art from the unknown Eastern European countries which accompanied the opening of the borders could be to some extent a temporary disadvantage.

Hans Knoll - Art as a Form of Mediation, Interview Part 1

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Hans Knoll - Art as a Form of Mediation, Interview Part 2

[11:24 min] download for: mobile, computer and iPod | send feedback

Hans Knoll - Art as a Form of Mediation, Interview Part 3

[12:07 min] download for: mobile, computer and iPod | send feedback

Hans Knoll - Art as a Form of Mediation, Interview Part 4

[09:22 min] download for: mobile, computer and iPod | send feedback

Knoll realized that his ability to stay inspired during this time of upheaval required stamina. He often considered closing his gallery during this time, but in the end, he met the challenge and began to work in Moscow. He now finds St. Petersburg a very exciting place for art.

Knoll’s desire to develop, to network, as well as his stability and his realistic grasp of his own possibilities and limitations have opened many doors for him in the art world. He works very closely with Blue Noses und AES+F, from Russia, as well as representing the Hungarian artists, Ákos Birkás und Csaba Nemes. In Austria, the Gallery Knoll also represents artists such as Mara Mattuschka und Wilhelm Scherübl. (wh/jn)

Juraj Carny is a gallery owner, curator, and art critic. Since the late ’90s, he has been running the Galerie Priestor in Bratislava, which is also called Gallery Space, and uses the gallery, among other purposes, for the promotion of art from the countries of the Visegrad Group.

Juraj Carny - Slovakian Perspectives, Part 1

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Juraj Carny - Slovakian Perspectives, Part 2

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It was not only his early commitment to art from and in Eastern Europe that established his standing in the international gallery culture. In particular, Carny made a name for himself through his innovative approaches to the presentation of recent and experimental art. Projects such as Crazycurators, Nomadspace, Billboart Gallery Europe, Gallery Evolution de l’ Art, the release of the Slovakian and Czech versions of Flash Art, RentArt, and his artist-in-residence program through Gallery Space, all show common characteristics of his work: the opening up of contemporary art for a public which is not necessarily familiar with the art world, the preference for art with an experimental character, the promotion of artistic talent in the international market, a transnational, cooperative self-understanding, the willingness to pursue various means and to choose a sustainable path despite a financially secure work situation.

For example, when it comes to the art rental business, RentArt, it is clear that Carny understands that his work is acting in the long-term. In his discussion with CastYourArt, he emphasizes the formative aspect of this project. When it began, there was no art market in Slovakia. RentArt was his reaction to this circumstance. People and institutions would have to be able to come into contact with art in as low-key a manner as possible, interacting with art as something to experience and learn in an ordinary way. In this way, a new clientele for art is developed over the long term, increasing the opportunities for economic success.

From his own experience, Carny understands what it means if artists seize the possibility to financially profit from their work. There was a whole generation of Slovakian artists who, during the communist era, due to their lack of adjustment, were forced to meet the costs of their artistic work while seeing no profit, Carny told us during our tour through the city. Many of them became impoverished and due to their age, can still not find a place in the art market at this time. Carny calls them a lost generation. His father, Ladislav Carny, also belonged to this generation, but he was lucky. Following the communist era, he found international success, and currently serves as the head of the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava. (wh/jn)

“If somebody would come and wash my car, it would be nice. It would be nice, it would be done, but I wouldn’t pay for it. Sometimes I think that for many people, this is the same with art.”

Eva Jiricka, video and performance artist from Prague, translates intellectual concepts into everyday life in her work. She deals with concepts of others, of sexuality, of the menace of the stranger, of cities, as well as of the artist’s existence. There often exist prejudices which we consciously or unconsciously carry around with us and whose traces we leave behind in the form of actions, objects, writings, and visual templates, which we are fed to us by the media and which we gladly consume. In her video work, Jiricka reenacts these collective pictures. She represents them. She exposes them. She realizes them for us. She opens our eyes. Wide.

[6:05 min] download for: mobile | computer & iPod | send feedback
During her stay as an artist-in-residence at the Galerie Space in Bratislava, made possible by the Visegrad Foundation, we had the opportunity to speak with Jiricka over her work and her artistic self-understanding. The video sequences shown in the podcast were provided to us from the artist. They include clips from her works from 2004-2008: “New Home”, “Morning Cleaning”, “Drive”, “Merkmale” (“Characteristics”), and “Shit in the Garden”. (wh/jn)

Art is there for people and for the most part, people will come to the art. Sometimes, however, art comes to the people–provided that someone has enough of the enthusiasm and commitment to bring it to them. We had an interview with one such “gallery nomad” in the name of art.

[3:54 min] download for: mobile | computer & iPod | send feedback

Ivana Madariová, curator of the Galerie Space, occasionally leaves the premises of her gallery on Stefánikova Road in Bratislava and goes on the road with her art. Then the Space becomes Nomadspace, in order to get closer to the people, in order to bring art onto the streets and into public spaces, and to get passers-by interested in the young artists of the gallery. In order to render the art mobile, a small transporter was converted in 2007, and the first destinations were multimedia and film festivals in Slovakia, in addition to Re:Sonance in Vienna, Artissima in Turin, Zurich, and the 9th International Festival of Contemporary Art for Women in the Slovenian capital, Laibach. Nomadspace features mainly video art. It must bring attention to itself on the fly and communicate with pedestrians on the road. The approaches towards doing this vary quite a bit. In the case of the artists’ group, Azzoro, from Poland, it is the irony and performativity to which they refer, in the case of Zbynek Baladran, one of the most well-known Czech video artists, he creates a balancing act between sociopolitical-philosophical depth and a corresponding visual form with his video series. Lenka Cisarova, refers to the curator, Madariová, as an example of recent art from Bratislava. A project from the student of fine arts in Bratislava, which involves a dancing ballerina in a box, fits well into the “Cargobox” of the small transporter, the showroom of Nomadspace - a gallery underway. (wh/jn)

Rudolf Budja owns pictures which are usually only available to most of us in the form of cheap reproductions. He is an art collector, owner of the Artmosphere Galleries, and an internationally renowned dealer of Pop art. CastYourArt was interested in how one can become so successful in the art trade. After our four-part interview with Rudolf Budja, we learned a bit about his path to success, as well as the following: an art collector is not only an art collector. Rudolf Budja considers himself to be a kind of psychotherapist and “soul surgeon” for the wealthy who are seeking meaning in their lives. Art therefore provides not only a way of seeking, but also of healing. If the price of a piece of art is so high that even the rich and ruthless can feel its sting, it can plant the seed of an emotion on which that they had almost given up—the joy of discovering some kind of meaning in life. (wh/jn)

Rudolf Budja - Business and Passion, Part 1

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Rudolf Budja - Business and Passion, Part 2

[5:15 min] download for: mobile, computer and iPod | send feedback

Rudolf Budja - Business and Passion, Part 3

[5:49 min] download for: mobile, computer and iPod | send feedback

Rudolf Budja - Business and Passion, Part 4

[5:51 min] download for: mobile, computer and iPod | send feedback