Alexander Ochs Galleries Berlin I Beijing

Those new to the city are amazed at the peaceful area they walk into in the middle of this bustling metropolis when they pass through the inconspicuous entrance to the courtyard. But art lovers sail straight into the Sophie-Gips-Höfe, knowing full well that, in the second inner courtyard, they will find Alexander Ochs’s gallery, where the latest artistic positions await them. The collector Erika Hoffmann was the one who invited Alexander Ochs to set up camp here, and the gallerist was already very familiar with the neighbourhood: for the past 11 years he has been presenting primarily East Asian art in the Sophienstrasse – but not only here. The gallery accommodations have occasionally changed house numbers, and in Peking a major relocation took place in the spring of 2009. Here, too, they have moved for the third time: the Peking branch left the famous “798 Art Zone” Alexander Ochs helped to found after the art cluster there appeared to have morphed into a magnet for tourists on the prowl for adventure. Now the “Alexander Ochs Galleries Beijing” is located in the rural suburb of Caochangdi in a building designed by Ai Weiwei in which Tian Yuan operates her “White Space”. Works by Fang Lijun, Yang Shaobin and Liu Xiaodong as well as works by Damien Hirst and Anish Kapoor were exhibited at the opening of their 600 sq. m gallery.

The geographic area of both sites alludes to the gallery’s programme: in its first years their focus lay primarily upon contemporary Asian art, and they still represent a number of significant Chinese artists exclusively in Europe, among them Miao Xiaochun, Yang Shaobin, Wang Shugang, Chen Guangwu and Yin Xiuzhen. Beginning in 2008 the circle has been enlarged to include Western artists such as Miriam Vlaming, Radek Szlaga, Andreas Amrhein, Fides Becker and Micha Ullman. Heribert C. Ottersbach, among others, will be exhibiting in Beijing.

ALEXANDER OCHS GALLERIES BERLIN I BEIJING has initiated a series of solo exhibitions for their artists at international museums. Alexander Ochs himself curated other exhibitions and projects for art associations and museums, such as the opening exhibition “Arrogance & Romance” at ORDOS ART MUSEUM in Inner Mongolia (2007), Fang Lijun at the Today Art Museum in Beijing (2006), and Li Luming at the Hanan Museum in Changsha (2007). In Asia the gallery is present at the KIAF Seoul, the ShContemporary Shanghai and the ART HK Hong Kong International art fair; and in Europe it has participated in the art fairs ‘abc art berlin contemporary 2008’, art forum berlin, ART COLOGNE, ARCO Madrid and SCOPE Basel.

“The artist stands by his work and the gallerist stands by the artist!” – That is the credo of Alexander Ochs (b. 1954), who was one of the first European gallerists in China and who, at the same time, pioneered contemporary Asian art in Germany. And although the biographical details are less important here, it is nevertheless interesting to note how this gallerist progressed from New Music to art. Alexander Ochs speaks of a decisive experience: in 1992, through Fei Dawei he became acquainted with the paper cutting artist Lu Shengzhong at the Akademie Solitude in Stuttgart. He was fascinated by his works, which call into question the notion of autonomy. Time and again the very same figure is cut out; the scissors and the material appear to naturally play along with this. And yet every piece obtains a different result and becomes – although they are laid out together serially – a unique artefact. Inspired by these works, Ochs exhibited the artist Lu Shengzhong the very same year.

1996 was a difficult year for German-Chinese relations. Just recall, for example, that the Friedrich Naumann Foundation had to leave Peking because Otto Graf Lambsdorff was in contact with the Dalai Lama, or that the festival “China Today” scheduled to take place in Munich was cancelled because its organizer got muddled up in his contacts with the Chinese. For Ochs the democracy deficit in China meant that the artists were not allowed to exhibit in their own country, and they couldn’t exhibit in the West because no one was showing enough interest. He did not want to accept that art was being produced without restrictions in China but could not be exhibited in public. It was thus no visionary idea, but rather a necessary cultural and political responsibility that led Ochs to create a forum for Chinese and East Asian artists in Berlin. His gallery was intended to serve as an asylum for those artists who, in China, were not allowed to appear publically with their works (as you can read in the gallery’s founding manifest). Alexander Ochs helped to change this situation by founding a gallery in Berlin in 1997 and in Shanghai in 2002, and today he acknowledges: “The job’s been done!” A new situation for the artists has developed, and the internationalization of the gallery’s programme is being actively pursued.

During his many trips to China, Ochs’s experience of the foreignness, the otherness of this culture has increased. Ochs has also sensed a completely different approach to the manner in which art is communicated. It appears to him that there is a lack of an indigenous history of art. For that reason, in China art is largely defined by biography. Ochs has thus called upon our museum staff and art historians to become more active in their attempts to represent European art in China.

Alexander Ochs is engaged in this cause and he is actively working to overcome this lack. For two years he has been encouraging cultural exchange between Europe and Asia under the auspices of the non-profit organization EurAsian Culture Exchange gGmbH, which he founded together with Rainer Lingenthal.

What is driving this gallerist? “What interests me is art. There is good art all over the world – both here and there!” The ‘European’ Alexander Ochs is now continuously dealing with the tension between Western and Far Eastern art: with the differences and the common characteristics, with the confrontations as well as with the investigation of their possible coexistence – and thus with cultural dialogue. German, Dutch, Polish and Israeli artists have been added to the Chinese artists. But the Chinese maintain a strong presence.

ALEXANDER OCHS GALLERIES BERLIN | BEIJING
Sophienstr. 21
10178 Berlin-Mitte
Open: Tues–Fri 10am–6pm, Sat 11am–6pm
www.alexanderochs-galleries.com, Map: F 21

MIAO XIAOCHUN | BEIJING INDEX
Opening: 29 Jan., 7pm–9pm,
Exhibition runs: 30 Jan.–27 Feb.