Yesterday I took a half an hour train ride and made my way to Rotterdam. Actually with the intention to go to the Art Rotterdam, an international art fair with over 70 renowned galleries representing a huge amount of artists, which acts as exhibition as well as a sales event. Hey, you could even have gotten Damien Hirst original prints for 6500€! If that ain't a bargain... But anyways, beforehand I wanted to check in on the Project(or)Art Fair, which has basically the same concept as the Art Rotterdam, with the difference that it is a much smaller event that focuses on young and upstart galleries/artists. After planning my trip too late, strolling through the city for too long and in the end staying over three hours at Project(or)Art I skipped the Art Rotterdam and saved the 15€ entrance fee which I could then spend on a nice little booklet called 'Food Chain' by Geneviève Gauckler. I was told, that it's basically the same event every year anyways, so maybe I'll just come back next winter.

Project(Or)Art was a very cool event/exhibition with lots of young people, friendly curators, talkative artists and a somewhat international flair. I had some nice chats with David Keating, Rob Zimmermann, two girls from Kop Art and John De Weerd, who himself just finished at KABK two years ago and now works for the MAMA. Those chats were, besides the exhibited art of course, pretty much the reason I ended up staying so long. The galleries that impressed me the most were Vegas Gallery from London (check out Shane Bradford, Ryan McCelland, James Unsworth), Immanence from Paris and Tag from The Hague. In the evening there was also one hour of short lectures by some of the curators. Due to some problems with the projector it was somewhat chaotic but still interesting. And I learned that art people from Vienna gotta be the most stuck up, arrogant and rude of their kind.

By the way, Rotterdam itself is basically just as ugly as The Hague just with more modern architecture skyscrapers and more water. Still I somehow liked the 'flair' better, maybe because due to all these art events there was a constant feeling of 'creativity' in the air...