Art Insight #11: Lorenzo Rudolf

Q: What are your responsibilities as fair director of Art Stage Singapore?

A: The main goal of Art Stage Singapore is getting together artists, collectors, and art experts from East and West. I’m taking a role in every single part to achieve this goal. Based on the idea that the Asia Pacific market has to be open but unified at the same time, we try to be a matchmaker event for each part of the art world. This is why we invited opinion leaders and special collectors like Peter Nagy (Nature Morte, India), Emily Chao (Eslite Gallery, Taiwan) and Tomio Koyama (Tomio Koyama Gallery, Japan) to the inaugural program in 2011. Constructing harmonious and accessible art scenes, and creating a platform to provide these interactions between experts and passionate art lovers are the two big discourses of Art Stage Singapore. Put simply, I’m in charge of developing the content of the fair and achieving economical goals.

Q: The theme of next year’s edition is “We Are Asia.” You have been dedicated to regional emphasis since the beginning, but what helped you first come to that approach?

A: We need to remind people that Asia is comprised of separate entities. Each country has a strong nationalism and is not as cohesive as the United States or Europe. There is Korea, Japan, China, Indonesia and India, each with their own identities within their own territories. Many people ask me what I am doing to connect the Western and Eastern art world. I personally think that to connect the world, there must be enthusiastic communication among the Asian countries. Asia is not one thing. There are a lot of “Asias.” We introduce Southeast Asian art to other regions, and by doing so, we are giving an opportunity to understand each other’s art.

Q: What do you think is the relationship between the museum and the art fair? How can that relationship reach a harmonious balance?

A: For a long time, museums, institutions and art criticism defined what good art is. However, in the last 10 to 15 years, this has completely changed. These days, a good artwork means an expensive artwork. And it’s directly related to influencing big art fairs and galleries. There is no single standard for art. It would seem that institutions could do something about this phenomenon, but that’s actually a naïve thought. The one obvious fact is that there must be balance between the commercial and non-commercial. Our fair really tries to achieve that. To show commercial art is important, but it is also important to make people realize that this idea “art is about consuming and the more expensive the better” is not true at all. In fact, the commercial and non-commercial are now two sides of art, but they were just one in the beginning.

Born in 1959 in Bern, Switzerland, Lorenzo Rudolf was appointed director of Art Basel in 1991. At the iconic art event, he set up a long-term strategy and successfully oversaw a global expansion, including the addition of Art Basel Miami. After leaving Art Basel in 2000, he operated the Frankfurt Book Fair until 2003, and also launched Shanghai’s contemporary art fair SH Contemporary. He founded Art Stage Singapore in 2010 and held its first edition the following year.