00:00 America was founded in March 2005 when we opened the space in Brunnenstrasse,
00:07 which is like one of the new gallery areas in Berlin.
00:11 We opened it last year and now I think we are about 9 or 10 galleries located
00:17 within just 400 or 500 meters walking distance actually.
00:22 It's an artist-run space that we try to run as professional as we can actually.
00:32 It's me, Sebastian, I'm the gallerist and I've got a colleague, Silvia.
00:37 We were found by the artist and a group of friends and we are friends with the artist.
00:42 So we decided in early 2005 that we could try probably to open the gallery.
00:47 The name "America" is actually an idea of one of the artists who approached me
00:55 and said "I just read this little prose, like a story by Franz Kafka, it's named "America".
01:03 And there's references to an artwork by Martin Kippenberger which is called
01:08 "The Happy Ending of Unhappy America".
01:12 So this is like the story behind it.
01:14 And we represent 20 artists from the Leipzig Academy who just finished or are about to finish
01:19 their education in sculpture installation and photography obviously.
01:25 A preview of Berlin Art Fair, are you happy with it?
01:29 Definitely, I mean we did it last year for the first time just 4 or 5 months after we opened our space.
01:36 And it was such an amazing success, it was really overwhelming because we never thought
01:41 that we were able to participate in an art fair after such a short time.
01:46 And so we decided to do it again this year, just with another mixture of artists.
01:51 But it's quite good, I mean curators are coming by and this is one of my aims actually,
01:58 to make the contact to curators because the art that we are showing is a bit more on the conceptual side.
02:04 It's not so easy to sell, you have to talk I think a lot more about it
02:10 because it's really like conceptual and it's not so easy to approach sometimes.
02:14 And so it was a success so far, but the fair is just on for 2 days.
02:19 Which artists did you bring to the fair?
02:22 We have like a mixture between 6 artists and it's Alexei Mechchanov for sculpture,
02:29 then sculpture and drawing Fabian Reimann, Göran Knautschuhn is straight photography.
02:35 Then in the back, conceptual artist Falk Haberkorn who works in the broadest sense
02:41 with everything that's based on the artist's role, like a very romantic feeling to that.
02:48 And he's doing photography, performances, sculptures and this is a drawing he just finished last week actually.
02:54 And then we have a small video piece by Eiko Grimberg together,
02:59 which goes very good together with Andreas Schulz's very fragmented, very kind of,
03:05 in the first hand very hermetic pieces, but if you see them together on the wall,
03:09 it's very narrative and it makes absolute sense.
03:12 So this is like, more like, and this is Victoria Binstock, I forgot her.
03:18 Yeah, it's more or less like an overview of what we have in the gallery.
03:24 Yeah, if you could tell us a little bit about this sculpture.
03:28 This is one of Alexei Meshchanov's newest works.
03:33 He's from the Ukraine, born in Kiev and came very early to Germany in 1985
03:40 and studied in Leipzig, actually in a photography class,
03:44 but he moved on to become a sculptor himself because he's got like an education in welding
03:50 and working with materials.
03:52 And his approach is more or less to find like forms and like, who are not so easy to describe.
04:01 It's like very, very hermetic as well, but very aesthetically.
04:05 And they have got a, on a sub-level it works very good in my taste.
04:12 And he's going to have a solo show in November this year in the gallery,
04:16 six or seven new pieces.
04:18 What are the plans for the future, art fairs, shows?
04:23 Next year we'll try to participate in Art Brussels
04:28 and probably apply for the Art Forum for Berlin and then we will see.
04:34 I mean, obviously everybody wants maybe to participate in the list in Basel,
04:40 but I mean, we're just one and a half years old and so we will wait and see actually.
04:45 So good luck here at the fair for the future and thank you very much for the interview.
04:49 Yeah, you're welcome.
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