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Chris Moore<\/strong>: Esther, could you begin by telling us how you became involved in art? What was it that drew you to become an art dealer?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Esther Schipper<\/strong>: My mother is an art historian, so I grew up with going to see a lot of exhibitions. My mother is Dutch, which is an important detail in this little story because she was always very fond of the activities of the Stedelijk Museum<\/a><\/strong> in Amsterdam, [which was] back in the seventies probably one of the most avant-garde and interesting museums in Europe. I grew up in Paris, so when we visited our Dutch relatives, we very frequently went to visit the Stedelijk Museum, and that\u2019s something which I grew up with \u2014 Gilbert & George\u2019s \u201cliving sculpture\u201d or Ed Kienholz\u2019s \u201cBar\u201d.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n CM<\/strong>: Did you consider becoming a curator or entering the museum system?<\/p>\n\n\n\n ES<\/strong>: Oh, that was all left very open at the time. It was just really the fact that I really kind of realized that this was the place I really wanted to be. Not so much in terms of what that would mean professionally but in terms of: these are the people I want to be surrounded by; these are the people I like, that I think are interesting; this is fascinating with all these things happening. And then, by another coincidence, I met Monika Spr\u00fcth, who had just opened her gallery and who was literally looking for somebody to do what is called \u201cgallery sitting.\u201d I mean that was at the time prior to Internet, fax machines, computers, whatever, and one had one telephone in the gallery and somebody needed someone to answer it when it was ringing, eventually open the door if somebody wanted to come and see the exhibition, and know where the pricelist was. And then in \u201987, I went to Grenoble in France to do the post-graduate curating course at the L\u2019\u00c9cole du Magasin<\/a><\/strong> .<\/p>\n\n\n\n CM<\/strong>: At the time, that course was quite unique, wasn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n ES<\/strong>: Yes! The Whitney had something similar but after having worked for a couple of years in a commercial gallery I was very, very tempted by more institutional work. I did a three-month internship at the Whitechapel [Gallery]. I worked as a freelance curator. I opened a little office in Cologne where I did a few little commercial projects \u2013\u2013 I published some multiples with Rosmarie Trockel, for instance, but also I did some projects with Rudolf Stingel and Thomas Locher. These were the things that helped me to make some money, and pay for the travelling, and the writing was also not something that I could make an existence upon. So I returned to Cologne and this little office very quickly became a gallery. And that was 1989.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CM<\/strong>: In 2008 you asked Phil Tinari to curate a show, CLYWX, with Chu Yun, Liu Wei, and Xu Zhen. What was the background to that show?<\/p>\n\n\n\n ES<\/strong>: I\u2019ve been ten years on the board of Art Basel and in 2007 we went to China to do field research on the gallerists over there. Now I was born in Taiwan in the early sixties. My father is a sinologist, a specialist in Daoism. I lived there until age seven and as a little child, in my first year of school there, I was fluent in Chinese. But I had never been to China [PRC] before. In 2007 my father was living in Fuzhou, so I first went to visit him and when I arrived in China, I just thought that it was so familiar to me \u2014 everything. I mean, after a week I started to understand parts of the language, the way things taste, the way people are. It\u2019s kind of a \u201cMarguerite Duras\u201d kind of thing! It\u2019s certainly not like coming home but it is, oh yes, definitely a part of you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CM<\/strong>: Well I can empathize with that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ES<\/strong>: Then we saw a lot, a lot, a lot \u2014 galleries, artists, shows, independent places, what have you \u2014 on that trip. I was kind of skeptical about what I would say are the kind of \u201cChinese Export Artists\u201d that had gained the market in the 2000s. So I was really surprised to meet so many extremely interesting people and to see very intriguing works of art.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CM<\/strong>: Well, that said, you have a particular aesthetic in this gallery. Is there anything in particular you feel unites the artists you exhibit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n ES<\/strong>: I think that we are, as one says in German, a \u201cProgram Galerie.\u201d Although I\u2019m not really a big fan of this term \u201crelational aesthetics,\u201d I think that this is certainly a base of the gallery. The year I was in Grenoble, I met a few artists with whom I am still working today, people like Philippe Parreno and Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. Then during my time in London, I met Liam Gillick and Angela Bulloch. Together we worked on defining and showing, but also commodifying, a form of art that does not always have a proper defined \u201cobject.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n CM<\/strong>: It\u2019s a strange situation, in some respects, where a lot of this art which is criticising art production and distribution \u2014 in some respects its commodification is antithetical to its own program \u2014 and yet it is this very commodification that has helped its own distribution, its own success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ES<\/strong>: I know what you mean, it\u2019s just that\u2026well, I think that the most interesting part for me in this whole chain \u2014 this whole food chain! [laughing] \u2014 is probably how do you wrap up an idea so that it can travel without the author? Sometimes it has a lot to do with clarifying the process. Pierre Huyghe made this wonderful piece, a big iceboat<\/strong><\/a>, which during the whole show was melting. But it\u2019s not really complicated once you have an elaborate drawing and you work with ice sculptors, and whose work is to realize this kind of work. So we set up an outline how a work like this can be really refabricated pretty easily \u2013 much as it might be difficult to live with this piece!<\/p>\n\n\n\n The question how do you sell something like this can be put on a different level. You can try to conserve this one-time big iceboat, but somehow this doesn\u2019t really contain the idea anymore, because you would set a complicated system to conserve something which is only a work when it slowly disappears.. So we were trying to define an economy for this kind of work. Maybe it\u2019s rather clear if we take video art as an example. When Gerry Schum opened his \u201cfernsehgalerie\u201d in 1967, he aimed to find an economy for video art in mass distribution, thus television. But mass distribution and communication failed to be the right place for art. How do you set up an economy for media-based work, produced with a capacity for infinite multiplication in a market in which uniqueness prevails? Questions of edition sizes become content as well as an economy, and a unique film can also be a beautiful concept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n CM<\/strong>: Which is also perverse in some respects!<\/p>\n\n\n\n ES<\/strong>: Yes!<\/p>\n\n\n\n (The full version of this interview will be published at a later date.<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Esther Schipper, one of the most influential gallerists in Europe, represents many of the artists who have come to dominate the intellectual scene in what is often described as \u201crelational aesthetics,\u201d a term Schipper herself eschews. 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Photo: \u00a9 Wendela Schipper<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
“The Last Few Mosquitos,” 2005, mechanical mosquito, injection, plexi, wood 30,7 x 18,7 x 11,5 cm (XZ002)
Installation view Chu Yun, Liu Wei, Wu Zhen “CYLWXZ\u201c, Esther Schipper, Berlin, 2008
Photo: \u00a9 Carsten Eisfeld<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Installation view “Liam Gillick 1848!!!,” Esther Schipper, Berlin, 2010
Photo: \u00a9 Carsten Eisfeld<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
“Inverted Lightbox 3, 2011 (Left) Lightbox, mixed media, 278 x 378 x 20 cm, Unique (GK 059) Courtesy private collection, London
Inverted Lightbox 2, 2011 (Front right) Photocopier, weather proofing roll, tar 118 x 76 x 82 cm, Unique (GK 068), Installation view \u201ecarbon index compost copy\u201c, Esther Schipper, Berlin, 2011 <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
(image: Christopher Moore)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
(image: Christopher Moore)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
(photograph: Andrea Rossetti, courtesy Esther Schipper)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
“Baby-Doll Saloon,” 1993 The actual work consists of an A4 sheet with the Rules text, accompanied by a certificate. The Rules text can be reproduced in any medium or form by the owner. Variable (AB 199)
Installation view “Rules Series”, Esther Schipper and Friesenwall 116a, Cologne (1993)
Photo: \u00a9 Lothar Shnepf<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Installation view Angela Bulloch “Macro World One Hour3 & Canned\u201c, Esther Schipper, Berlin, 2002
Photo: \u00a9 Carsten Eisfeld<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Photo: \u00a9 Esther Schipper<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
“No Positions Available,” 2007, installation, signs on wall, dimensions variable (each sign 35 x 24 cm), edition of 3 plus 2 artist’s proofs (CF 127)
Installation view \u201eCeal Floyer\u201c, Esther Schipper, Berlin, 2008
Photo: \u00a9 Carsten Eisfeld<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
“The Daughter Of A Taoist,” 1991, installation view “Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. The Daughter Of A Taoist,” Esther Schipper, Cologne, 1991
Photo: \u00a9 Lothar Shnepf<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Photo: \u00a9 K.M. Schipper<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Photo: \u00a9 Axel H\u00fctte<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Photo: \u00a9 Esther Schipper<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"