Roy Kahmann started new art fair, Haute Photographie, with a pilot event three years ago. It went so well it’s now a firm favourite on the Art Rotterdam Week calendar.
“I always had a love and hate relationship with existing fairs,” he comments as someone regular on the fair scene as a gallery owner.
“The lack of young talent, difference in quality and nowhere to buy good art books, and drink wine. So I thought ‘how can we make an art fair with the atmosphere of a museum where we can buy the work?’.”
The fair looks more like a ‘traditional’ art exhibition with an added platform for young talent (they chose 6 New Dutch photographers and helped them make their first selling exhibition).
Gallery colleagues of Kahmann from Berlin, Munich, Paris, Milan and New York, were invited to help fill the two black boxes in the centre of the fair with classic vintage pieces as well as contribute a selection from their contemporary collections.
Inspiration from the Modern Times show at the Rijksmuseum and Ikea; he explains: “When I go to Ikea I don’t need anything but leave with lots of stuff. We want the museum atmosphere rather than a normal art fair. The show is about the artists not the galleries”.
