Double Agents brings together accomplished players on the international art stage to address a diversity of professional strategies and mechanisms for success in today’s competitive art word. The traditional dynamic between artist and gallery is changing as rapidly as new communications platforms, societal norms, and economic incentives arise. We all have to wear multiple hats in order to keep up with the explosion of knowledge and opportunity across multiple fields – to play more than one role in the perpetually shifting dynamics of today’s art world. Be it artist, curator, collector, art dealer, publisher, professor, institutional, corporate, non-profit, governmental, or private interest – the lines between roles need to blur to enable diverse and experimental approaches to artistic production and consumption. Double Agents is an ongoing series of discussions each bringing together exceptional people who work across many fields at once in order to tell their stories and share ideas.

Constanze Kleiner – Die Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin

Rachel Rits-Volloch – Making MOMENTUM

Maik Schierloh – Autocenter & Bar Babette

CONSTANZE KLEINER

Constanze Kleiner has more than 20 years of experience in the field of art and culture. After majoring in Slavic  Studies and German Language and Literature, she devoted herself to initiating cultural  projects. Kleiner started her career as a founder and managing partner of the White Cube Berlin GmbH, together with her partner, the artist Coco Kühn. In partnership with the artist Thomas Scheibitz, and the curator Heike Föll, she realized the exhibition project 36x27x10 in Berlin’s former “Palace of the Republic”. The success of this exhibition  led to the conception and realization of the Temporary Kunsthalle, a privately funded,  ephemeral exhibition hall for contemporary art. Constanze Kleiner  headed the Temporary Kunsthalle as managing partner and  was responsible for the concept and implementation from 2007 to 2009. In 2009, she was offered to become a partner of White Cube Productions Ltd, a company that was mainly focused on contemporary art production.

Since then, Constanze Kleiner was supporting several international exhibition projects as curator and adviser. In 2012, she curated Gregor Schneider’s STERBERAUM in partnership with the National Museum in Szczecin. In the same year, she was invited to become a partner of the Polish company  Baltic Contemporary SPZOO, which won the competition, announced by the city of Szczecin, to determine the operating partner for the new municipal exhibition-venue for contemporary art. From November 2012 until October 2013 she was building up this new institution – TRAFO Center for Contemporary Art – in the role of Artistic Director, responsible for the exhibition and educational programming. During this time, Kleiner realized five international exhibitions at TRAFO, with partners such as the Musarara School of Art and the MusararaMix Festival; in Jerusalem, Israel, the Collegium Hungaricum Berlin, and MOMENTUM, as well as solo exhibitions by renowned artists such as Christian Jankowski and Ryszard Wasko.

Since 2014, she has been Chairperson of the TRAFO art foundation, and founder of Schlachthaus Fresh&Fine Art Gallery. In 2019, Constanze Kleiner established Gallery KLEINERVONWIESE, opening in its new location at the Villa Erxleben in September 2019 with the inaugural exhibition, bonum et malum

NELYA KORZHOVA

Artist and curator Nelya Korzhova (born in 1963) works in the media of painting, photography, objects, installations, with her practice based on the principle of distant contemplation. Her curatorial projects, emerging from a focus on social sculpture, eschew the concept of art as
a ready-to-consume object. Rather, she identifies with the concept of “no man’s land”, where the viewer is invited to become part of the event in order to see what it’s for.
From 1997 to 2014, Nelya Korzhova was the organizer (together with Roman Korzhov) and art director of the Samara Regional Public Charitable Foundation “Center for Contemporary Art”. Together with Roman Korzhov, in 1999 she founded the international Shiryaevo Biennale of Contemporary Art, initiating the concept of the “Nomadic Show” — a processional exhibition engaging the public with art while moving through space. From 1999 to the present, Nelya Korzhova is the curator of the main project and artistic director of the Shiryaevo Biennale.

Korzhova has curated many projects and programs, including: “Cover
of Daily Routine”, “Fascism Now”, “Nine Months of Feelings”, “Another Freedom”, “Visiology”, “Wonders of Idleness”, “Street as a Museum — Museum as
a Street”, “Volga. Zero”, amongst others. She is the author of articles on contemporary art, a compiler of catalogues, and a lecturer.

Nelya Korzhova was the nominee of the State Innovation Prize in 2006, 2008, 2012, and 2017. She worked at the Volga and Central Volga branches of the National Center for Contemporary Art (NCCA) / ROSIZO from 2007 to 2017. Nelya Korzhova lives and works in Samara.

RACHEL RITS-VOLLOCH

Rachel Rits-Volloch is the Founding Director of MOMENTUM, the Global Platform For Time-Based Art. Launched in 2010 in Australia as a parallel event to the 17th Biennale of Sydney, MOMENTUM moved to Berlin in 2011. She is currently also the Chief Curator of photoBERLIN, an annual professional workshow launching in Berlin in 2020. In 2016-2017, she was Visiting Professor in art theory and curatorial studies at the Bauhaus University, Weimar, lecturing in the MFA program in Public Art and the PhD program in Artistic Research. She is a graduate of Harvard University with a degree in Literature, and holds an M.Phil and PhD from the University of Cambridge in Film Studies. Born in USSR, she grew up in the US, and worked in UK, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Istanbul, Sydney, and now Berlin.

MOMENTUM’s mission is to continuously reassess the growing diversity and relevance of time-based practices, with an aim to support artists and artistic innovation in Berlin and worldwide. MOMENTUM’s program is composed of local and international Exhibitions, Artist and Curator Residencies, Video Art in Public Space Initiatives, a Performance Program and Archive, an Education Program and Archive, and a growing Collection. Since MOMENTUM’s inception in May 2010, Rachel Rits-Volloch has curated or produced over 100 Exhibitions and Events worldwide, showing the work of over 600 artists, as well as over 60 Education Events, in addition to an ongoing program of Artistic Research Residencies which has so far hosted 45 international artists, alongside a diversity of related programming.

MAIK SHIERLOH

Maik Schierloh is an artist/curator, born in 1968 in Wilhemshaven, Germany. After his apprenticeship as Organ Builder, he studied Art at the University of Applied Science Ottersberg, Germany, in 1993 – 1996. Until 1996 we was a member of the ARTiV Artist Group. In 1997 Schierloh moved to Berlin and began planning, organising and executing cultural and art projects and exhibitions. His early initiatives include Club Project Lovelite, a venue for concerts, exhibitions, theatre, whch he ran in 1998 – 2008. From 2001 – 2018, he was also the co-founder of Autocenter, in collaboration with Joep van Liefland, one of Berlin’s most iconic project spaces. [www.autocenter-art.de/exhibitions/program – www.autocenter-rediscovery.de] In 2009 – 2016, Schierloh initiated the education initiative, Autocenter Summer Academy [www.autocenter-summeracademy.de], engaging experts from the Berlin art scene to lecture on their practice. Since 2003, Maik Schierloh also runs the bar and art space Kosmetiksalon Babette [www.barbabette.com]. In 2017, he began an ongoing initiative to restore a historic building in the countryside near Berlin for arts usage [www.gutshaus-philadelphia.com].

Founded in 1999 by artist/curators Roman Korzhov & Nelya Korzhova, the Shiryaevo Biennale is the oldest active international biennale of contemporary art in Russia, and is also the largest cultural event in the Central Volga region. The main project is held in the ancient Russian village of Shiryaevo, while the parallel program takes place in sites across Samara, on the opposite bank of the Volga river. One of the most important components of the biennale’s structure is the International Creative Laboratory, which conducts a kind of contemporary art experiment within a traditional Russian village. Over the course of two weeks, the artists live directly in the locals’ homes, immersed in the local culture, creating works responding directly to the local environment. The results of these encounters is itself a creative act, offered to the wider public over the course of one day, in the form of a collective, performative procession: the “Nomadic Show.”

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