We are pleased to invite you to a discussion with artist Elana Katz during her solo exhibition [F]ACTS OF VIOLENCE. We are looking forward to welcoming Marek Claaßen, founder and Managing Director of ArtFacts.Net, Chiara Valci Mazzara, curator and Artistic Director of fontaine b, as our conversation partners.

In addition to discussing Katz’s work, the panel will look at the role of performance art in the international art market, and consider the challenges of its integration in the commercial contemporary art scene.

The discussion will be held in English.

Photo: Performance “V.” by Elana Katz
[F]acts of Violence, KWADRAT, 2019
Photo: Kojo

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Speaker bios:

Marek Claassen serves as Director of ArtFacts.Net, the world's leading knowledge base for artist, curators, collectors and historians, which he co-founded in 2001. By tracing the career of more than 500,000 artists and near to 1 million exhibitions, ArtFacts.Net offers a transparent view into the fast-changing contemporary art world. He is responsible for strategic expansion and oversees product development. With a background in Business Administration and many years of experience working with various galleries, universities and software companies, Marek has been actively producing database enhanced websites for the art world since 1995. He has won many prizes for his internet activities and in 1998 was nominated as one of Europe’s foremost multimedia entrepreneurs by the EU Commission. Mr Claassen developed 2004 the “Artist Ranking” tool which allows you to see and measure different artists productivity and success in the art world side by side.

Elana Katz is a conceptual artist working primarily in the medium of performance art. Katz’s work confronts cultural conventions, critically examines the complexity that lies within contradictions, and thus aims to create an experience of unlearning the assumed. She has exhibited/ performed at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium (2011), Diehl CUBE Berlin (2013), P.P.O.W. Gallery, New York (2013), Kunstwechsel, Aachen (2015), DNA Berlin (2015), ROCKELMANN& Berlin (2016,17,18), and is represented by KWADRAT Berlin. She studied in New York at the Parsons School of Design and earned a Meisterschülerin title from the Berlin University of the Arts (Class of Katharina Sieverding). www.elanakatz.eu

Martin Kwade is the founder and owner of gallery KWADRAT, founded in 2007 as a project space in a private apartment in Berlin-Schöneberg. After a successful start, the project-room moved to a location on Adalbertstrasse 20, Berlin-Kreuzberg, in March 2008. Since then Kwade has collaborated with a multitude of artists. KWADRAT, with a turnaround of about nine shows a year and often themed exhibitions, is open to any representation of art. Showing painting, sculpture, video, performance and multimedia, it has become a meeting point for the young vibrant, emerging art scene in Berlin. Kwade consciously avoids the term “dealer” for his practice, so as to be open for any format of art distribution. After participating in the first Art-Fairs in Brussels and Berlin, KWADRAT has functioned as regular gallery since 2013 based in Berlin-Kreuzberg, Manteuffelstr. 92.

Chiara Alexandra Valci Mazzara (b. 1980) | based in Berlin (Germany) | independent curator, art dealer and artistic director at fontaine b. | holds a PhD and Master in Contemporary Art Management | specialises in performance and conceptual art | has worked with many private and public institutions, museums and foundations, including Hermann Nitsch Museum in Naples (Italy) and Vienna (Austria), Quadriennale di Roma (Italy), Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Roma (Italy), Morra Foundation (Italy), and Shimamoto Foundation in Naples (Italy) as a curator, exhibition producer, organiser and dealer. She worked closely with artists such as Jannis Kounnellis, Hermann Nitsch, Ann Noël Williams, Shozo Shimamoto and Vadim Zakharov.