HONORARY BOARD
Axel Anderl & Kathrin Weber
Viennese lawyers Axel Anderl and Kathrin Weber represent various artists and art institutions. Both are collectors with a focus on contemporary Austrian art and run their own ArtWorld under the motto “Kunst, Freunde!”. The motivation behind their art engagement lies in the support of emerging artists. Since September 2021, their loft in Vienna’s 7th district has served as an art space in the spirit of the Viennese Salon bringing together artists represented in their collection, members of the art scene and leading business representatives.
Giangi Fonti
Giangi Fonti founded Galleria Fonti in Naples in 2004. Since 2005, this gallery has participated in major national and international fairs including Art Basel, Art Basel Miami, Frieze London, Artissima, Art Cologne, and Art Brussels, to name but a few. Its programming focuses on languages and research that explore poetic conceptualism. Since May 2019, Fonti, has also been part of the selection committee of Arte Fiera, Bologna.
Heinrich Groenewald & Shona van der Merwe
South African curator-duo Heinrich Groenewald and Shona van der Merwe founded RESERVOIR in 2021 as an independent partnership specializing in contemporary South African art. In February 2023, the two partners opened a space in Cape Town. In addition to their gallery programming, this duo regularly curates exhibitions with art institutions both in South Africa and in Germany.
Natalie Kates & Fabrizio Ferri
Kates is a curator, gallerist, and producer of art-related events in New York City and Ferri a business school professor at the University of Miami. The two established a collection of contemporary art that began with early street art works of Banksy. 2020 then saw them launch an artist residency program focused on emerging artists often over looked in the contemporary market and found the Kates-Ferri Projects art gallery representing new voices with a program ranging from sculpture to installation, painting and mixed media art creating a platform for global conversation.
Sydney Ogidan
Sydney Ogidan is an art advisor, curator, and collector whose work has redefined how audiences experience contemporary art. As the founder of HELMUTS, a visionary project that brings art into unexpected spaces, Ogidan has challenged traditional gallery norms, creating immersive experiences that merge art with daily life. Owed to his Austrian-Nigerian roots, Ogidan’s perspective is informed at a deep level by cross-cultural sensitivity and innovation.
Karla Osorio
Karla Osorio Netto is a large contemporary art collector, a lawyer and a gallerist. She created and ran the non-profit institution contemporary cultural space ECCO (1999–2015) in Brasília, Brazil, with hundreds of exhibitions, courses, educational program and books published. She also ran the FOTO ARTE Festival from 2002 to 2009, and in 2017 she opened Galeria Karla Osorio with headquarters in Brasília and an office in São Paulo.
The gallery represents brazilian and foreign artists, prioritizes innovative art projects that address various languages and techniques and participates in art fairs in several countries.
Levent Özmen
Levent Özmen, who completed studies in political science as well as a master’s degree in museum studies and has worked in various roles at the Istanbul Archeological Museums and IKSV (Istanbul Foundation for Arts and Culture), joined the team of Dirimart in 2016. At this gallery, he has since organized major exhibitions by artists such as Ayşe Erkmen and Sarkis and Shirin Neshat as well as contributed to many Dirimart-published exhibition catalogues and artist’s books. Having recently taken over the role of Senior Director, he now focuses on the gallery’s growth within the international scene.
Claudia Pasko
Claudia Pasko has been working at the renowned Konrad Fischer Gallery since 2002 and now holds the position of senior director at its Berlin location. She is an expert on artistic stances in minimal and conceptual art such as those of Carl Andre and Sol LeWitt as well as Giovanni Anselmo, Mario Merz, and Giuseppe Penone, who belong to the “arte povera” movement, and she is the gallery’s artist liaison for artists including Alan Charlton, Richard Long, Susan Philipsz, and Gregor Schneider.
Sabine Schmidt
founded the contemporary art gallery PSM in Berlin in 2008. This gallery inherited the initials and logo of Schmidt’s grandfather, Paul Schmidt, who founded his own machine production factory. PSM represents and exhibits a wide range of international artists born between 1965 and 1996. Many of them, like Catherine Biocca, Christian Falsnaes, and Nadira Husain, push the boundaries of what it means to address and engage the art-viewing public.
Rosemarie Schwarzwälder
In 1978 Rosemarie Schwarzwälder became the director of the Galerie nächst St. Stephan in Vienna, which was founded by the Catholic priest Otto Mauer in 1954. Since 1987 Schwarzwälder is the owner of the gallery. Today, the program stands for an internationality grounded on the principle that art must be intellectually relevant to last – a principle on which the decision to represent an artist is based.
Lui Wienerroither
is a contemporary art enthusiast who, at the young age of 17, acquired drawings by an artist influenced by Oskar Kokoschka and Alfred Kubin. Ever since 1988, he has worked together intensively with his gallery partner Ebi Kohlbacher at Wienerroither & Kohlbacher next to Café Central in Vienna, specializing in the most important artists of Viennese Modernism and their influence on the development of Austrian art after 1945.