Young Collectors Day: FEROZ Galerie Welcomes the Newly Hooked Art Crowd

Julian Sander, founder of Bonn’s FEROZ Galerie, took stock of consumer culture and identified two defining characteristics: credit and inherent obsolescence. Bluntly put, we’re on a merry-go-round of buying, replacing, and always repaying—on credit card payment plans we cannot necessarily keep up with. But Sander’s perspective is shaped by the opposite of mass consumption. Descended from a line of art collectors and dealers, and great-grandson of August Sander, one of the foremost 20th-century photographers—whose works now fill the gallery—he grew up surrounded by things that enrich and endure.  In an effort to reconcile 21st-century buying habits with the considered, and lasting, experience of purchasing works of art, Sander is opening his gallery to young would-be collectors for “Young Collectors Day,” an afternoon focused on forming a collection—in or out of sync with the market.

Sander will offer his guests historical and market contexts for the pricing and value of works of art, while encouraging them to embrace their own vision and go their own way. “This is, of course, a process that stands to undermine the mass influence ... of the powers that be,” he recently told Artsy. “That is on purpose.” Buyer beware: you may find yourself under the influence of Jory Hull’s “Twin Infinitives” project, the artistic centerpiece of the afternoon, and end up seeding a collection with one of his beautifully incongruent photographs. The project consists of a randomly paired assortment of images, programmed to flash across a framed screen. A picture of the dinged-up bumper of an orange car may appear above one of a car’s roof strewn with cherry blossoms. This may be followed by an image of a polka dotted tie above that of a shining body of water. And so on, with never the same pairing twice. Viewers who fall in love with a photographic hybrid have only to push a button next to the screen to select it for printing and purchase.

“Young Collectors Day” will be held in conjunction with SaisonstArt Bonn, a weekend during which art lovers can hop on buses and shuttle between Bonn’s galleries and museums.