Jennifer Flay: "La Fiac Online can create new vocations" for contemporary art
Jennifer Flay, director of Fiac and of the first edition of Fiac Online Viewing Rooms 2021. © Fiac-OVR
Text by: Siegfried Forster Follow
8 mins
The premiere of Fiac Online Viewing Rooms, is it a turning point for the international contemporary art fair?
It has been almost a year since the world of exhibitions and museums has been more or less confined and physical art fairs have been canceled.
With its first virtual edition, from March 4 to 7, one of the most important contemporary art fairs in the world tries to create new connections.
Interview with director Jennifer Flay.
Publicity
Read more
Taking a tour of the Fiac has never been so quick.
The first virtual edition of the International Contemporary Art Fair lets you know in two clicks that the most expensive work offered in the Viewing Rooms is
Step
, an eight-meter steel sculpture, made by the American Richard Serra in 1982 and sold by Galeria Guillermo de Osma for 2.8 million euros.
The selection and the modes of access to the works are a real success, on the other hand, even having visited all the 212 galleries present, you will not have witnessed a single enthusiastic or disastrous reaction from a collector or visitor ...
RFI
: The first virtual edition of the Fiac is a Fiac that does not take place in October, or take place at the Grand Palais in Paris.
Since the health crisis, is the Fiac still the Fiac
?
Jennifer Flay
:
Of course the Fiac is still the Fiac.
It will take place in October 2021 in the Grand Palais Éphémère, on the Champ-de-Mars.
It will be a physical fair.
One edition, that of last year, had to be canceled because of the health crisis, but the Fiac of course continues to be the Fiac.
Moreover, one of our exhibitors in New York told me yesterday that we could feel the Fiac buzz all the way to New York.
And several galleries have already explained to us that it was their best fair online, although it was only open since Tuesday morning and only for gallery customers.
►
To read also:
The fair 1-54 in Paris, "a real breath of fresh air" for the African contemporary art market
You thought of Fiac Online as “
a dynamic, fun, efficient platform
” which wishes to “
create new connections
”.
What sort of new connections do you think of
?
We believe that the nature of a digital platform can open access to art to new audiences.
There is something very intuitive.
Fiac Online can create new vocations for amateurs and enthusiasts, but also collectors.
In normal times, there can be something intimidating going into a gallery and asking for a price.
Through this platform, it is easy, just click on a button from the gallery and the prices are displayed.
Amoako Boafo: “Green Clutch” (detail), 2021, Phototransfer and oil on canvas.
210 x 180 cm.
Work presented (and already sold) by Mariane Ibrahim Gallery.
© Fiac-OVR
The Fiac Online brings together 212 galleries, as well as five very prestigious guest curators, from Bernard Blistène of the Center Pompidou to X Zhu-Nowell of the Guggenheim in New York. There are also seven associated institutions of world reputation, including the Louvre Museum, M Woods Beijing, the Muséo Tamayou in Mexico or the Bourse de Commerce-Pinault Collection and the Pernod Ricard Foundation which will soon open their doors. Do you aspire to reconstruct the public cultural space of the art world in a virtual space
?
Through the Fiac Online Viewing Rooms, we offer a complement.
Finally, the Fiac Online Viewing Rooms are intended to accompany our physical events.
From October, during Fiac, we want to recreate the cultural landscape virtually.
In any case, we want to give more elements of contextualization.
I am thinking, for example, of the phosphorescent paintings by Nina Childress, shown at the Bernard Jordan gallery (Paris, Zurich).
In black light, they take on a completely different appearance than in broad daylight.
On the platform, we can see both versions.
You can also watch an ice sculpture by Philippe Pareno transforming over time at Esther Schipper.
At other gallery owners, we can discover the backs of paintings, for example a work by Picabia from 1938 which includes all the labels of all the exhibitions in which it was presented ...
►Also read:
“The new cultural project of the Center Pompidou” after the 2023-2027 closure
Fiac Online signifies the will to respond to the crisis caused by the coronavirus. In the world of cinema, there has been a fierce battle between platforms and cinemas for a year. In the art world, can we speak of a struggle between online auction houses and art fairs
?
I don't like to talk about combat, because we are part of the same ecosystem.
Online auction houses, auction houses, art galleries, art fairs, we are different.
La Fiac is not an intermediary in the sales that our galleries carry out.
We are the organizer of the event.
Transactions take place between galleries and their clients.
We offer something different: the possibility of interacting with a gallery, to learn more about the work.
Now it's true, there is a lot going on online.
Fortunately, it exists.
As we know, museums and theaters are closed, galleries are open, but they work at a slower pace.
It's important that there are these events online to help them find their audience.
Among the 212 galleries from 27 countries, there are two that are also based in Africa, the Cécile Fakhoury gallery (Abidjan, Dakar, Paris) and that of Selma Feriani (Tunis, London). Does a digital edition facilitate access to Fiac
?
Of course.
Both for galleries and for visitors.
I don't have the statistics yet, but I think that there are not only African galleries that are present at Fiac, but also visitors who watch Fiac Online from their African country.
And since you speak of African galleries, indeed, for several years, we have been lucky to have that of Selma Feriani.
And since 2019 that of Cécile Fakhoury.
She is doing an online exhibition of two artists: the impressive work of the painter Serigne Ibrahima Dieye and the paintings of Beninese Roméo Mivekannin who works in Toulouse, but who is of Beninese origin.
I really encourage the public to go and discover these painters.
To learn more about creation in Africa and the diaspora, we also have the Mariane Ibrahim gallery.
It is based in Chicago and features artists from the African Diaspora and Africa, for example Jerrell Gibbs, and also Amoako Boafo, a remarkable young Ghanaian painter who lives in Austria.
There are a lot of discoveries to be made.
►Also read:
African culture: the appointments in March
On the platform, you offer visitors, among other things, the “
View on a wall
”
mode , that is to say the possibility of viewing the works on the scale of a stand at the Grand Palais, or, upon registration , virtual tours on Zoom. What are the technological innovations of this Fiac Online
?
We wanted to take the best of what has been done elsewhere, but also to innovate.
The
View on a wall functionality
has been tested by other online events, but here at Fiac, it's a
View on a wall
in the Grand Palais!
A little nod to our loving home.
What is very refined and pushed on Fiac Online are the selection criteria.
We can sort the works in an extremely fine way: by date, size, medium, price, or all of this at the same time.
You can also, and this is very nice and new, choose chance encounters if you want to be surprised, astonished.
And it is possible through this feature "Chance encounters".
►
Fiac Online Viewing Rooms
, from March 4 to 7, 2021.
Newsletter
Receive all international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
Arts
Culture
France
Culture Africa
our selection