014 - Volcanic eruption in the Leipziger
Julia Stoschek
Photo: Şirin Şimşek/wikipedia.org
Stardust in Her Hair
Hello Smart Art Lover,
Today I will conclude the swan song with the most dazzling of all Berlin private collectors - Julia Stoschek. You can listen to her on the entertaining 219 minute long ZEIT ONLINE podcast: Alles gesagt?(Everything Said?, only in German). Or I tell you a little about her. She comes from the Brose family business in Coburg in Upper Franconia. The automotive supplier most recently achieved an annual turnover of 6 billion euros. After starting out as an unsuccessful gallery owner in Düsseldorf, she sought advice from Klaus Biesenbach, for whom I worked as an intern 20 years ago. He is known as the founder of KW Institute for Contemporary Art, also called Kunst-Werke, and the Berlin Biennale. In New York, he worked for many years as director of PS1, an experimental laboratory for the MoMA - Museum of Modern Art, and at the same time as Curator at Large at MoMA itself. Now he directs the affairs of the Museum of Contemporary Art, MOCA for short, in sexy Los Angeles. Powerful. Influential. Never smiles. A genius of successful networking.
Julia Stoschek found further advice in the collectors Harald Falckenberg in Hamburg and Ingvild Goetz in Munich, who in my opinion represent the grand seigneur and grande dame of the German collector elite. Right from the start, she concentrated on time-based art works, in other words video and film installations, with the ambition to acquire the masterpieces of the most important artists of the genre. That was and is very smart - this art genre usually sits like lead on gallery shelves and is more interesting for museum exhibitions than for the humble collector next door. In 2006 she opened her first presentation room in Düsseldorf. Ten years later, Tim Renner, then Berlin's Secretary of State for Culture, mediated a property on Leipziger Strasse with marble floors and a wood-panelled cinema auditorium. The Julia Stoschek Collection converted the former Czechoslovakian cultural institute into an extremely elegant dependency for several million. In the Zeit Podcast Julia Stoschek evokes my sympathy. Well informed she presents herself as a collector of the highest standing. Privately, she lived together with the prince of photography Andreas Gursky, who also calls her The Volcano. And she has a four-year-old child with the CEO of Axel-Springer SE, Matthias Döpfner. More glamour is hardly possible. She held a chair of the board of directors at the MoMA. Under the mediation of Klaus Biesenbach she is now on the board of MOCA Los Angeles and Kunst-Werke. This beautiful woman presents herself with exquisite taste, knows how to network excellently and shows a clear line. We digress, back to the swan song.
Julia Stoschek Collection, Berlin
Photo: Robert Hamacher / Courtesy JSC
The Volcano Erupts
After Flick, Olbricht and Haubrok, the bomb exploded at the beginning of May. Julia Stoschek threatens to leave Berlin with her collection in 2022 and rebuild it in another place. Rumour has it that it is Los Angeles. What has happened? As the owner of the premises on Leipziger Strasse, the Bundesanstalt für Immobilienaufgaben (Federal Agency for Property Issues) wants to renovate the building and increase the rent. The collector says juicy. On May 10th Gesine Borcherdt gave the city a resounding slap in the face in the Welt am Sonntag (Axel-Springer SE). On the same day Christiane Meixner tore the responsible authorities away in the Tagesspiegel. And then one media explosion follows the other.
In August, Kito Nedo and Hans-Jürgen Hafner investigated the situation. Warning, now come the numbers. The rent to date is 1.66 EUR plus a flat-rate operating fee of 2.80 per square metre. With a floor space of 2,690, this is 11,997.40. The payment is to be raised to 2.78 plus the operating fee, which in the end amounts to 15,010.20. The juicy rent increase turns out to be 3,012.80 EUR. With all due respect, but this is a volcanic eruption in a water glass. Actually, it's about appreciation of one's own performance. Meanwhile, the collector is rowing back, after all the important people have been startled to contact her. Julia Stoschek now has another seat on the board of the Verein der Freunde der Nationalgalerie, which is regarded as powerful. Nice move.
Jeremy Shaw, Liminals, 2017, 16mm film and HD video transferred to video, 31′25″, color, sound, Video still., Courtesy: the artist and König Galerie, Berlin
Pure joy
The Julia Stoschek Collection is a proud beacon in the Berlin art landscape. Currently running is The Quantification Trilogy by Jeremy Shaw. In the distant future there is the event of quantification, which leads to the union of all people in the swarm. In a small group, however, the gene for spirituality is reactivated. You can experience the consequences in the three film installations. The aesthetics of these parafictions recall the cinéma vérité of the 1970s and experimental music videos of the 1990s. Liminals especially is a pure joy, with its beguiling images and hypnotic soundtrack. Time-based art at the absolute height of our time. Be sure to watch it!
And today I stay with the Julia Stoschek Collection. On the website you can find videos of past exhibitions under the media library. If Netflix and Co. can't offer anything exciting except third-rate monster series, watch some films here. A cool correspondence course in time-based art.
Jeremy Shaw
Quantification Trilogy
September 5 - November 29, 2020
Julia Stoschek Collection, Berlin
Be brave, gentle and smart.
Yours,
Florian
