PANEL DISCUSSION: Rethinking the Art Market

*This event is open to the public, limited seating available come early to save your spot.

In the framework of the Armenia Art Fair’s “Art Week”, IN SITU and Goethe-Centre Yerevan present “Rethinking the Art Market – How a changing and globalized market is spawning new models for exhibition, collaboration, and sustainability”.

The discussion will feature guest speakers Irina Popiashvili, founder of Tbilisi’s Kunsthalle and Dean at the Visual Art, Architecture and Design School (VAADS) at the Free University of Tbilisi, and internationally renowned conceptual artist and professor at Munich’s Art Academy as well mentor of the BPA / Berlin program for artists, Olaf Nicolai. The discussion will be moderated by Anna Gargarian, Founder & Director at HAYP/IN SITU, the panel will address the current state of the Market, its changing players, and the challenges and strategies for contextualizing new localities within the global market.

About the Panelists:

Irena Popiashvili

She is a founder and dean of the School of Visual Art Architecture and Design School VA[A]DS at the Free University of Tbilisi. She is a curator and gallerist who after spending almost 20 years in New York, moved back to Tbilisi to use her NY art world experience and raise a new generation of artists. In 2017, she co-founded Kunsthalle Tbilisi, and from 2013-2017 she was the director and founder of Popiashvili Gvaberidze Window Project– in Tbilisi.
Previously, Irina co-owned Newman Popiashvili Gallery in New York (2005-2012). In 2012 she served as a rector of the State Academy of Arts in Tbilisi. Ms. Popiashvili has curated exhibitions in the US and Europe, including the Georgian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1999 and in 2003. She received a BA from Tbilisi State University and an MA in art history from the University of Georgia in Athens (USA).

Olaf Nicolai

Addressing the contemporary world as a landscape of consumption, Olaf is a conceptual sculptor, video, performance, and installation artist who recycles the detritus of Western culture as an ethnologist of alienation. Primary in all of his work is the sense of the bodies of his viewers in historical space and in communion with others. A key component for many of Nicolai’s investigations is the relation of Modernism to political and economic histories, and references have included Le Corbusier, Jean Genet, Ad Reinhardt, and Duchamp. Recent works, such as his Chant d’amour (2003) and Escalier du Chant (2011), rely on allusive imagery and the desire of sensual, aural stimulation to induce gallery goers to consider the space around them as one charged by commerce and current political events. Nicolai has shown at Documenta X, multiple Venice Biennales, MoMA, the Denver Art Museum, the Hayward Gallery in London, and many others. Olaf Nicolai is also a professor at Munich’s Art Academy, and mentors at the Berlin Program for Artists (BPA).