Selling is not the most important thing at the Art Island art fair near IJmuiden

A driving Formula 1 car made of cardboard. A thirty square meter large textile sculpture of Medusa, the monstrous figure from Greek mythology. A stairwell filled with twenty-metre-long rolls of ‘photo wallpaper’.

It is a selection from the many room-filling installations that will be on display at the second edition of Art Island, a fair for contemporary art.

Art Island requires sea legs. At the Sluisplein in IJmuiden, visitors were able to take the ferry to Fort Island for the first time in March last year. That is a former defensive island in the mouth of the North Sea Canal, which is on the Unesco heritage list because of the nineteenth-century bunker complex.

Frits Bergsma and Jacko Brinkman of gallery Bergsma & Brinkman took the initiative last year. It had to be a counterpart to Art Rotterdam, only for Amsterdam gallery owners, intended to create a post-lockdown feeling. Due to the corona restrictions, the first edition was small in scope and sold out in no time. This year, many more galleries and art institutions are participating, including those from outside Amsterdam, and there is room for two and a half times as many visitors: a maximum of 4,000.

It is a low budget scholarship. That means no stand construction, the gallery owners don’t get free tickets to hand out to relations, and if the art sellers want a meal or oysters from the fishmonger at the fair, they have to pay for it. The gallery owners mainly complain that they have to pay for admission tickets, says organizer Brinkman. “You have collectors who only come when they are invited.”

Ominous spaces

The exhibition organization advises gallery owners to make a presentation that is tailored to the rooms in the underground bunker. Paintings can also be hung in the often ominous rooms – hanging hooks may be installed in the joints of the monumental building. But, says Brinkman, “it is much more interesting to respond with art to this special location.” With their own gallery, the organizers present an installation by Inez de Brauw with a painting, lamps and mural.

Galerie Van Gelder shows the life-sized cardboard racing car, a sculpture by the American artist Lee McDonald. On Fort Island, selling is of secondary importance to him, says owner Kees van Gelder. “I see that stock market as surf, to use a very commercial word. My attitude as a shopkeeper is to follow the adventure, wave my flag a bit. Then unexpected things happen.”

Lee McDonald’s moving sculptures often attract attention, says Van Gelder. Previously, he made a life-size ‘Starfighter’ fighter jet out of cardboard, which he sailed down from a roof. By recording such a ‘test’ on video, the gallery owner says, the energy of such a moment can be relived again and again later.

Maurits van der Laar of the Hague gallery of the same name also fills his space with one large sculpture. The Spanish artist Susanna Inglada has made a six meter wide sculpture of Medusa from velvet, silk and cotton. The artist adjusts the cliché of Medusa as a fatal woman, according to the gallery owner, by depicting her crying. Tears flow from her eyes like slides so big.

Sale

A small chance that he will sell it, says Van der Laar. “I see it primarily as a beautiful statement for my gallery. If I can present the work beautifully and many people see it, I am already satisfied.”

Ron Lang from LangArt shows two light installations by Lin de Mol. As a gallery owner, the fort forces him to respond to the space like an artist, says Lang. “It makes no sense to hang paintings there. We have a round, seven-metre-high space for which Lin de Mol has specially made the installations.”

Lang and his daughter Sara often present installations at fairs. “It may seem like we need to go bankrupt,” he jokes. It’s not like that. Their gallery space is small, at fairs they can offer the artists they represent a larger stage.

And the saleability of space-filling installations is not too bad, says Lang. On the first Art Island, the gallery showed a video artwork by Laura Hospes. Not very commercial either, says the gallery owner, but purchased by Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar.