Voices On Art - The Van Horn Gallery Podcast | hosted by Daniela Steinfeld

Julieta Aranda, Berlin based artist and filmmaker is since many years contributor, co-director and collaborator with Anton Vidokle of the online platform e-flux. She is also organizing this years conversations for Art Basel. Julieta has exhibited her works internationally including the Venice Biennial, Berlin Biennial, documenta, the Guggenheim etc. She talks her background, growing up in Mexico and leaving home at fourteen, paving a path on her own. She talks her artistic process, how she took up the task to look at the dark side of things, the hidden underbelly of society, themes and movements and that she only feels drawn to create a work of art when language fails her to understand the topic - when it is beyond words. Every work of art requires a different medium, a different strategy to be created and Julieta listens intently to each work to find the right means to bring it into the world. If not creating works of art she writes, communicates with people, brings them together and tries to find ways to collaborate and make the life of each person easier. You will find many interviews, videos and information on Julieta online. Follow our Instagram @van_horn_duesseldorf or @voicesonart The Podcast is vailable on https://van-horn.net, Anchor, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and many other platforms. Portrait photo by Peyton Fulford.

Recorded November 4, 2021, 36 min., Language english

Artist Tim Shaw founded, together with his partner Niamh White, a curator, Hospital Rooms after a close friend of them had to be hospitalized in a mental ward. Hospital Rooms brings great art into spaces where it is really making a difference - working with psychiatric units all over the UK. Listen to Tim’s truly inspiring story how artists and art can shape difficult spaces in an energizing way and how the personal empathy and engagement of, in the beginning, just two people, creates a field that affects society and humanity in a profound way. Recorded October 18, 2021, 35 min., language english.

Coming from finance and with a deep rooted interest in the arts, politics, sociology, philosophy and the humanities, collector Alain Servais speaks his mind and does not hold back. He talks finding his own voice and becoming really good at something by having the right fractures. He found himself in art because it opened his mind to new dimensions and new kinds of people. Being exposed to other people's view of the world greatly improved his vision of the world. Art for him is not contemplation or pleasure, art is having to make an effort, to work on oneself and pushing oneself to the limit - to feeling comfortable being uncomfortable. He is especially interested in contemporary art, young art, the art that needs to be preserved today because nobody understands or values it. By collecting it he is preserving a slice of humanity. Art changed his life and for him art is a way of living, not separated from life, politics and the larger society. Recorded September 30, 2021, 57 min., language english

For over 50 years, New York-based artist and activist Judith Bernstein has created expressive drawings and paintings that boldly critique militarism and machismo in a manner that is at once humorous and threatening. Since graduating from Yale in 1967, Bernstein has developed a reputation as one of the most unwaveringly provocative artists of her generation. Steadfast in her cultural, political and social critique she surged into art world prominence in the early 1970s with her monumental charcoal drawings of penis-screw hybrids. In this Episode Judith talks the inspiration of men's bathrooms, the glass ceiling women had to face in the artworld of the 60s and 70s, the founding of A.I.R. the first all women's art gallery, her rage at injustice and her partcipating in activist groups like the Guerilla Girls. She talks her family background, her first exhibitions, the long years of being out in the water, her coming back and her upcoming exhibitions and she reveals that the strongest relationship in the world she has is with art. The talk was recorded 23 September 2021, 45 min., language english.

This is a special Episode produced in collaboration with the Independent Art Fair, New York City. Vito Schnabel, art dealer, gallerist and curator, with gallery branches in New York City and St. Moritz, talks his early years and young adulthood, playing Basketball on the streets of New York City and visiting art exhibitions. He talks his insecurities and challenges and how those helped him to grow. He shares how the dialogue with his sister Lola, who is an artist, and her artist friends shaped his own understanding of art and highlights how important the support of his mother and her belief in him was. He relates how him being open, listening intently and evaluating what happened around him helped him finding his own language in the arts. Early on he started curating and met important artists like Ron Gorchov or the great René Ricard who became friends and mentors and whose expertise and wisdom he was soaking up and valued greatly. Vito talks friendship, his passion for painting and their capacity to be portals also in the 21st Century for anybody who wants to see. This years Independent Art Fair will be the first fair Vito is attending in his home town. There he will show new paintings by extraordinary painter Jorge Galindo in a solo-presentation. Recorded August 10, 2021, 33 min., language english.

“A WORLD WHERE I CAN THINK ANYTHING” This is a special Episode produced in collaboration with the Independent Art Fair, New York City. Artist and painter Maysha Mohamedi talks her background in science, the similiarities between science and art - and the differences. She gives a very clear analysis what it means for her to be an artist, her need to express herself in her paintings, how she wants to create believable marks and lines and that she needs to have a large percentage of her life to herself in her studio, which is a world where she can think and do anything. She talks her desire to become exceptional at something, to be an expert and sees artists in line with highly trained, specialized athletes, who need to concentrate on one special skill to be able to be exceptional. She talks her first experiences with art through seeing an exhibition of paintings by her mother, her life in the studio and at home with her kids and husband and relates her own painting process, using found or created tools and bodyparts to create marks that make up her energetic, large-scale abstractions. At the Independent Art Fair franklin parrasch gallery / parrasch heijnen will present an intergenerational show of her paintings in juxtaposition with a work by John Wesley, who is one of her favourite artists and on whom she completed her graduate dissertation. Recorded August 3, 2021, 41 min., language english.

“I’M NEVER BORED” This is a special Episode produced in collaboration with the Independent Art Fair, New York City. Karla Knight, artist and painter based in Connecticut, is a force onto herself. In this Episode she talks her growing up in a family that was very interested in the otherworldly, the occult and the spiritual - which inspired Karla to dive deep into the unknown within her own paintings. From an early age on she knew who she is - an artist - never tiring to follow her own path and being utterly independent in life and art. In her paintings she developed her own imaginary language, inspired by her son’s early lettering. At this year’s Independent Art Fair she will debut her new tapestries, which are influenced by Lakota Winter counts, in a solo-presentation with Andrew Edlin Gallery. Following this will be her first institutional solo exhibition with a survey of her work at the Aldrich, opening Fall 2021. The Podcast is available on most platforms, on https://van-horn.net and on the Independent’s OVR at https:/www.independenthq.com recorded July 21, 2021, 31 min., Language: english

This is a special Episode produced in collaboration with the Independent Art Fair, New York City. My guest is Nicelle Beauchene, founder of the eponymous gallery in New York, former president of the board of NADA (New Art Dealers Alliance) and co-founder, with Franklin Parrasch, of Parts & Labor in Beacon. In this talk Nicelle covers her life, from growing up in a farm town in Connecticut,  becoming a competitive snowboarder, competing against men and falling in love with art through a certain painting at the Wadsworth Atheneum. Her curiosity drew her to roam broader spaces and finally pursuing a career in the arts. She tells how it was for her being a professional woman in the art business while raising three kids. She talks competition vs. collaboration, how she took adversities and disencouragement as challenge and stepping stone. She opened up her gallery while being pregnant, running a succesful art business and having a family. She relates in depth how collaboration and integrity are her core values in working with artists, other galleries, institutions and collectors. She talks passion, ambition, gut feeling and new opportunities coming up, like moving with the gallery to a new space in Tribeca and her upcoming project at Independent, where she will present new works by Louise Despont, the artist she originally opened her gallery with. Nicelle gives an enlightening insight into her relentless support for the artists she works with. Listen to a clear minded and inspirational woman who knows and does what she wants. Recorded July 22, 2021, 36 min. Language: English

This is a special Episode created in co-production with Independent Art fair, NYC. Hana Ward is a painter, ceramicist and founder of the ceramic brand Uno + Ichi from Los Angeles, California. Hana talks about how growing up in an artistic household helped her finding her own way into the arts. She witnessed an educational system in the US that - in  her own words - fails black students in manifold ways and through being a teacher herself - and not liking it at all - she understood that painting is what makes her happy. She talks in depth about how she finds inspiration in special books and that relating to her lineage and to the earth helps her go deeper into her painting practice, which she considers to be connected to her spiritual path. Her paintings often touch on themes of liberation, memory, history and diaspora. Through her landscape paintings, she documents focal, yet disappearing parts of her native city while her graphic portraits pay  praise to unsung heroes of our collective legacy. Hana relates in a very personal and honest way what it means to find her way as an artist. Her presentation at Independent Art Fair with Mrs. gallery in NYC will be a premiere for her. Recorded June 23, 2021, 32 min., Language: english

This is a special Episode created in co-production with Independent Art fair, NYC.  Susanne Zander, founder and co-owner - with Nicole Delmes - of Delmes Zander in Cologne talks in great detail not only about her personal story, but especially about the story of the so called "outsider artists", whose work is often misunderstood and not appreciated fully when given labels like "self taught", "outsider", "naive" or "Art Brut". Susanne grew up with collecting parents and a strong and fearless mother, who not only funded a collection of the artists mentioned above, but also just did what she wanted to do in a time when this was even harder for women than it is now. Susanne fell in love with art and artists from an early age on and is taking the exact same approach - forward and fearless. She is a relentless supporter and agent for the special artists Delmes Zander are discovering, working with and bringing - sometimes for the first time - in front of the eyes of an audience. She runs a gallery since 30 years and talks changing times, open and closed minds and the special role the Independent Art Fair played for the gallery. In crossing over genres and labels, in expanding ideas and concepts about art and in bringing the so called "outsider artists" into a contemporary art context, Delmes Zander hold a unique place among galleries. Listen to a passionate, opinionated and outspoken woman and gallerist. This talk will also be part of the Independent Art Fair's OVR in September 2021. Recorded June 16, 2021, 38 min., Language: english