Earlier this month, the newcomer Riga Contemporary of the International Arts Tour opened in a former warehouse in the capital of Latvia. More than forty participating galleries are mainly from Nordic and Eastern European countries, but a few are from the United States, Japan, China, South Korea and Indonesia. While Latvia is not the first place to think of when most people think of contemporary art, the fair (with free registration beforehand) attracts 12,000 visitors.
“For me, it’s totally shocking when people like ‘Why Riga?’. Even Riga’s people!” Jeffrey Rosen, co-director of Tokyo-based Misako & Rosen, co-chair of the board of directors of the Art Nouveau Dealers Alliance, told Observer. (He wore a T-shirt that said “99% Joke 1% Art”.) Rosen not only showed Lawrence Leaman and Nathan Hylden at the contemporary booth in Riga, but also the player behind the scenes of the launching instrument. The core curatorial direction of invitation only comes from Rosen, whose familiarity with cheaper and casual models of fairness, such as NADA, may have given Riga contemporary a foundation.
His initial approach was to invite more mainstream commercial galleries on the roster with an artist from the Baltic. “I think if these spaces were involved, they could actually do a good job,” he said. However, despite early interest, these artists did not end up attending. “They don’t necessarily have time to take risks.” But the people who do appear “willing to lower their temporary sales partial cancellations prioritize and take longer with a longer view.”
It is worth noting that Rosen has a personal connection with Latvia. At the age of 17, he resigned and moved to Riga, where he went as an exchange student in the mid-1990s. “I was very impressed even though I was here for a short time.” “I always wanted to come back and really curious about the art world because that’s mine.”
However, he easily admits that the Baltic region is quite barren in terms of contemporary art. Riga itself does not have a museum of contemporary art. Lithuania’s closest neighborhood fair, Art Vilnius, “is definitely our reference point, but mainly a role model of perseverance,” Zanečulkstēna, founder of Riga Contemporary and King? The Center for Contemporary Art (Riga’s first ongoing contemporary art program) told Observer. 16 years ago, Čulkstēna participated in the first edition of Art Vilnius: “It felt like no one came,” she recalls. “Like, no one. But they didn’t give up.
Since 2021, Kim? The Center for Contemporary Art has been an active participant in the International Art Fair Tour, and has recently made appearances in Miami (2022), Paris International (2023) and Warsaw Gallery Weekend (2024). In 2022, King? Launched Riga Confidential, a miniature fair that brings together nine galleries. Riga’s contemporary Baltic and Nordic references mainly come from Gold? Teams are a way to “include existing scenarios”, which Čulkstēna calls “a person who is publicized and exaggerated in many ways.” The goal of the first edition of the fair is to attract local attendance. Starting next year, the focus will be expanded to include international tourists and collectors.
čulkstēna completed Columbia University’s art management program, including accounting, business law, copyright, fundraising strategy, art history, education and philosophy – and brought this knowledge back to her homeland. “It may be better to combine the missing infrastructure and economic situation, and the result is few collectors. In Latvia, the whole concept of actually getting art and having art at home or in the office or having art in the office is still not common in Latvia. In addition, “the post-Soviet post-traumatic effect is that art and money are not mixed. One is pure and the other is dirty.”
The booth of Latvian gallery Masksla Xo shows the sculpture installation of Nils Jumitis, while gallerist Biruta Auriņa was “surprised in a good way” at the fair’s turnout and “hopefully it will be a tradition”. The gallery has been open for 25 years and is one of the oldest on site, and has shown work in Berlin and Viennacontemporary locations in the past. “We have to cultivate this culture of buying art, supporting the culture of art,” Auriņa said of the backward Latvian art world.
Polina Berlin, the same name at the Young Gallery in New York, shows the work of Casey Bolding. Berlin was born in Riga but grew up in the United States and worked at Paula Cooper before opening his own space. “I was surprised by the level of thoughtfulness and innovation,” she said of the fair. “It’s refreshing to be the only New York gallery here,” she quipped. “Everyone is so enthusiastic, it’s so good in the art world, maybe unusual. It’s very different from the groups of people you meet at other fairs or other cities.” She especially thanks for the scale. “I’m not going to provide something for everyone, and it’s not fair. It’s almost like a back-to-back thing…it loses this particular particularity when it gets too big.”
For Rosen, carefully planning this particularity is the point. Headquartered in Otsuka, Japan, the Texas-born dealer feels “both geographically and in power structures.” When he opened Misako & Rosen with his wife, “it’s soon became obvious that the best way – the only way – we can operate if we find a gallery similar to us and work together.” The gallery of Rosen participated in Miami, Basel Hong Kong artwork, Frizz Seoul, Miart in Milan, Art Ono in Seoul, and many smaller fairs in Japan. He and Kim? The team worked in Japan as part of the Rosen Hot Springs project.
“The model of fairness is broken,” he continued, so much so profit-oriented that no one except a few large drivers are constantly involved. An expo like Riga is “disruptive” in part because its participation is not as expensive as the Latvian Ministry of Culture subsidized, thus minimizing economic risks and allowing non-transactional exchanges. “You try to create a situation that is not offensive, not an elitist, but at the same time, not selling the ideas behind the short-lived art, artist and art production in any way,” Rosen said. “It’s a strange kind of anti-capitalism.”
The public plan of the fair discusses the themes from new sponsorship models to the evolving role of technology in artistic production. In the opener, “The role of gallery in the 21st century”, gallerist Olga Temnikova (half of Temnikova & Kasela Gallery, based in Tallinn) noted, “We don’t have that much to host people on Baldonia – I mean it’s hard to get people here.” She herself in New York at Estonia House, New York, where Esther once led a 25-year-old mini-exposition for Esther, an event provided by the Estonian government.
“Can this work? I think it’s OK.” Luosen pondered. “As long as the fair can sustain funding, it allows us to come here without spending arms and legs – why not?” he admits, which requires commitment and support from the participants. “They don’t have to be the same person. But I think those who stick with it will benefit from sticking with it.”
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