The Art Bystander

Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar

Meet the individuals who drive the art industry today and tomorrow; from artists to gallerists, curators, financial backers, advisors, collectors, and more. Hosted by Roland-Philippe Kretzchmar. More on www.theartbystander.com and www.instagram.com/theartbystander Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. 4 MAR

    #37 Barbara Corti

    In this episode of The Art Bystander, Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar meets with Barbara Corti, Partner at Hauser & Wirth and Senior Director overseeing the gallery’s spaces in Zurich Limmatstrasse and St. Moritz. Having spent more than two decades with the gallery across Europe and the United States, Corti brings a rare perspective on the evolving geography of the contemporary art world. After fourteen years in New York — including leading Hauser & Wirth’s Manhattan location in the former Roxy disco and roller-skating rink — she returned to Switzerland in 2020, where she now helps shape the gallery’s programming and presence across Zurich and St. Moritz. The conversation moves between continents and contexts: from the velocity of the New York art world to the quieter but deeply rooted collector culture of Switzerland. We discuss the particular rhythms of Zurich and St. Moritz, the role of seasonality in shaping art audiences, and the long-term relationships between galleries and artists that continue to define Hauser & Wirth’s approach. Alongside her institutional role, Corti works closely with artists including Rita Ackermann, Anna Maria Maiolino, Mary Heilmann and Nicolas Party. As always on The Art Bystander, the discussion unfolds in a conversational format — offering insight into how galleries, artists, places and collectors shape one another over time. Mentioned in the episode: Upcoming exhibitions at Hauser & Wirth Zurich, Limmatstrasse opening during Zurich Art Weekend 2026: War_overlays — Avery Singer and Sometimes a straight line has to be crooked — James Jarvaise & Henry Taylor Some of the hotels and restaurants discussed in the episode belong to Artfarm, the hospitality company founded by Iwan Wirth and Manuela Wirth. Artfarm operates independently from Hauser & Wirth. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    45 min
  2. 05/12/2025

    #35 Marlies Wirth

    Today on The Art Bystander, I speak with Marlies Wirth, Curator for Digital Culture and Head of the Design Collection at the MAK in Vienna, about one of the most quietly radical figures of late-20th- and early-21st-century culture: Helmut Lang. Our conversation turns not to his later sculptural practice, but to the architecture of a legacy that reshaped how we understand design, communication, identity, and the very idea of what a fashion house could be. The MAK’s new exhibition, Excerpts from the MAK Helmut Lang Archive — running 10.12.2025 → 03.05.2026 — reflects on the years 1986–2005, a period in which Lang’s vision dissolved the boundaries between disciplines. His work unfolded across clothing, graphics, architecture, staging, branding, and digital experimentation — not as separate gestures, but as parts of a single cultural language. Long before he stepped away from fashion, Lang had already begun to operate like an artist moving across mediums, using every surface as a site of meaning. This retrospective reveals how deeply his ideas anticipated the world we now take for granted. It recalls the moment he livestreamed a runway before the internet had become a stage; the years when he turned New York itself into an extension of his voice; the way his presentations and stores became environments rather than commercial spaces. Lang’s legacy is not simply a story of minimalism or aesthetic restraint — it is a study in how form can become communication, and how identity can be constructed with both precision and quiet intensity. In speaking with Marlies, the past becomes newly vivid: not nostalgic, but architectural. We explore how Lang’s decisions — from the shape of a jacket to the rhythm of a campaign, to the destruction of his own archive — can be understood as part of a larger narrative about authorship, memory, and the courage to redefine oneself. This episode looks back at the cultural landscape Helmut Lang helped build, and the echoes of his vision that continue to structure how we see and experience the world today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    43 min
  3. 12/09/2025

    #31 Volta & Affordable Art Fair

    In this episode, our host Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar turns the spotlight on two art fairs that have each shaped the mid-tier ecosystem in distinct ways. The Affordable Art Fair, founded in London in 1999 by Will Ramsay, has grown into a global franchise with editions in over a dozen cities — from Hong Kong to Hamburg, New York to Stockholm. With its price cap of around €10,000, the fair has opened the art market to tens of thousands of new collectors and offered emerging artists a platform to reach international audiences. Representing AAF in this conversation is Carl-Wilhelm Hirsch, who has helped steward its mission of accessibility and growth. The Volta Art Fairs, launched in Basel in 2005, are known as the “discovery fair,” championing solo presentations and younger galleries that bring experimental voices to the fore. Active today in both Basel and New York, Volta has built a reputation as the place where collectors often encounter artists just before they break through. Here, we hear from Francesca Starling, who has been instrumental in shaping Volta’s evolving vision. Together, these two fairs embody a vital counterpoint to the mega-fairs that dominate headlines. They prioritize intimacy, accessibility, and discovery — serving as laboratories where new collector generations are nurtured and where artistic risk-taking remains possible. As always, I’m fascinated by how the future of the art market unfolds, and conversations like this reveal how fairs at this scale — human, innovative, and open — might shape the next chapter of global collecting. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    49 min
  4. 04/09/2025

    #30 Brenda Weischer

    In this episode of The Art Bystander, the host Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar, is meeting a guest who is one of the most distinctive cultural commentators of her generation: Brenda Weischer, known to many simply as BrendaHashtag. Brenda is a writer, editor, and podcaster whose work moves fluidly between fashion and art. A graduate of Central Saint Martins in London, she has always approached fashion less as a marketplace and more as a form of cultural language and archive. She first made her mark with Disruptive Berlin, a project that treated vintage fashion as living cultural memory. Later, during her time as Fashion Editor at 032c, she developed Brenda’s Business—a series of interviews and essays that quickly became essential reading for their fearless look at designers and creatives through the lens of philosophy, critique, and cultural storytelling. At the same time, she built a wide audience as BrendaHashtag—a voice that is direct, unfiltered, and unmistakably her own. Her sharp commentary, minimalist aesthetic, and instinct for connecting fashion back to art, identity, and culture have made her a reference point far beyond the fashion industry. Today, through her own podcast Brenda Awareness, she continues to create dialogues that are as much cultural reflections as they are interviews. What fascinates me about Brenda is the clarity of her vision: she doesn’t play a role, she embodies it. She shows us how fashion, writing, and culture can merge into one continuous practice of thinking and making. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    55 min

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Meet the individuals who drive the art industry today and tomorrow; from artists to gallerists, curators, financial backers, advisors, collectors, and more. Hosted by Roland-Philippe Kretzchmar. More on www.theartbystander.com and www.instagram.com/theartbystander Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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