Heroes
other media. “But I’m really proud of Austrian artist Wolfgang Wirth,” says Reddeker as she thinks back to her earliest days at Hangar-7. “He’d almost given up on art and was making a living teaching English.” The discovery came as she was scouting for a seventh artist for an exhibition and remembered a painting of Wirth’s she’d seen once before. She visited his studio and “fell in love with his painting on the spot. Now he’s painting full-time again; it was a case of being in the right place at the right time.” Such love at first sight is rare, however. “Sometimes I have to think long and hard about whether I’m going to take a chance on an artist. If there are a lot of unfinished, annoying pieces lying around the studio, it’s of the utmost importance to see how the artist deals with that. If he says, ‘I’ve got to get back onto that. I don’t know if I can rescue it,’ that’s a good sign. Then I have to decide if there’s enough energy there for me to go on.” Lioba Reddeker’s journey to the high ground of art curation began in her childhood village in northwestern Germany, where she first encountered paintings on weekend trips to churches with her parents, and in the local art group. Today Reddeker identifies this sacred, lofty art as a good basis for understanding all art forms, including the contemporary. Apart from a single, life-like drawing of a landscape in the Emsland region – a brook, a bridge, a couple of ash trees – she’s never been an artist herself. She originally wanted to be a musician – preferably a conductor or a singer – and studied musicology but soon changed her major to history of art. Her interest in the origins of her subject – its context and background – coupled with a penchant for statistics and analytical thinking, were the perfect recipe for remaining focused in a world often clouded by emotion. The subject of her dissertation was Albert Reuss, a Viennese Jew who emigrated to England in 1938 and died a British citizen in Cornwall in 1976. Reddeker went to Vienna for three months while writing her dissertation… and is still there 22 years later. She never got her PhD as real life was far more 48
interesting than ossified theory (although her book on the displaced artist is still available). She immersed herself in the budding experimental Vienna art scene of the late 1980s. Not exactly afflicted by shyness, she would speak to artists at private views and exhibitions, soon blending into the entourage of Erwin Wurm, Helmut Mark, Willi Kopf and Hans Weigand. Through countless discussions about where these artists sought their inspiration and how they approached things, she “learned to see. It’s hard to make generalisations and I can barely put it into words. It’s got something to do with intuition and experience, but I still haven’t discovered anything systematic about it even now. Because I also use sociological and statistical instruments, I know how deceptive one’s own perception can be.” As a result she urges anyone who wants to start collecting to acquire background knowledge and concentrate on artists whose works engage them emotionally. “Like a chef who knows his stuff, it’s the only way to sort the wheat from the chaff. And even then you can never be 100 per cent sure that a piece will still be worth much in 30 years’ time. So you’ll still need luck more than anything.” Art, like the times we live in, changes ever more quickly. The mythical image of the isolated genius who knocks out a wonderful picture behind closed doors has been with us for a long time. Today’s young artists, however, grow up awash in media images and with billions of internet impressions seared into their brains. “So it’s no easy task,” says Reddeker, “for an intelligent artist to deal with such a glut of impressions. Wherever I am, I see artists dealing with important topics, like our future in the face of ecological disaster, social and political tensions, and how to find a meaningful place in this world.” Lioba Reddeker’s gaze wanders around the room again and settles pensively on a Wolfgang Wirth painting. And for a moment it looks as if she’s found that meaningful place – the art world’s intuitive reflection of our times. Check out Young British Art this autumn at Hangar-7 in Salzburg at www.hangar-7.com
additional photography: dean treml/red bull photofiles
On display: Light and space are in abundance with the artwork suspended from the sculpted metal ceiling. The paintings are set against a backdrop of Hangar-7’s unique collection of planes and helicopters