Highlights from LOOP Fair 2019

LOOP Fair is very pleased to announce some highlights of its new edition that took place in Hotel Almanac, Barcelona, from November 18 until 21, 2019.  For its 17th edition, more than 40 galleries and artists proceeding from 20 different countries offered an overview of the current moving image panorama, while touching upon cogent issues that are at once social, conceptual and formal. This new edition has allowed strengthening the new November dates in a complicated fair calendar as well as the new location in a 5 star luxury hotel, increasing local participation as well as the presence of international collectors, institutions and professionals. An improvement that brought a substantial increase in sales as well as a greater visibility. Included within a full festival program, LOOP Fair was proud to present collaborations with some of the most important European video collections such as Julia Stoschek Collection, TBA21–Academy and In Between Art Film by Beatrice Bulgari.

LOOP is honoured to announce that the winner of LOOP Acquisition Award—that will be in loan in the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) Collection—is Claudia Martínez Garay’s I WILL OUTLIVE YOU presented by Grimm Gallery. The winner of LOOP Mention of Honour is Nikolaj Larsen’s Quicksand presented by Galeria Presença.

In this edition, LOOP had the chance to count with a wider range of collectors from France, Italy, The Netherlands or Germany. As a professional, but also artistic, meeting point, LOOP has presented 44 artists from 29 countries, many of whom were present during the days of the event, thus demonstrating the involvement of the artists in the event and in the moving image format. Visitors were also able to discover in exclusive 13 World Premieres videos and numerous works rarely seen—26 videos of the last 2 years—, being the average age of the works of 2.5 years. 

In its desire for improvement and consolidation, the fair has had the pleasure of hosting new high-level galleries, which had never participated before—Esther Schipper (Berlin), Rodeo (London), carlier | gebauer (Madrid), Francisco Fino (Lisbon), Proyecto Paralelo (Mexico City), Grimm Gallery (Amsterdam), Narrative Projects (London), JosédelaFuente (Santander), KubikGallery (Porto) or Galerie C (Neuchâtel), MyMuseum (Budapest), among many others—, as well as consolidating the presence and commitment of many historic galleries, which have been supporting the fair for years and are now part of the LOOP family.

“The success of a fair depends on the quality of its works, but also on the mixture of the ingredients that compose it. It is important to have faithful galleries and also renew the selection: this year we had 40% of new additions, which I think is a good ratio”, explains Aurélien Le Genissel, director of the Fair. “LOOP deploys a large variety of audio-visual formats, such as video games, WhatsApp chats or interactive models”, says Aurélien Le Genissel, presenting the fair as “a window to the diversity of artistic voices, to reflect those multiple approaches through a careful selection of galleries and works”.

See this year’s fair selection of artist films & video here.

The next edition of LOOP Fair will take place on November 2020.