Watch the video of the Collectors Talk with Alain Servais , which was held at the fair 2014.

Rainald Schumacher in conversation with Alain Servais at VIENNAFAIR 2014
Alain Servais – Collector and blogger, Brussels/Belgium

What is Art? This question was the starting point for the conversation. Is art still how an older generation of artists and critics perceived it, one of the best tools to understand our world and ourselves a little better? Or is art a Babylonian whore, taking a bath in the flow of cash and diverting a small elite with glaring distraction from their existential emptiness? Is this prostitute providing only an alibi for the general lack of interest, to invest seriously in the most obvious problems of our planet?
Alain Servais is looking for answers to such question. Answers which we might find in the art works from his collection which can partly be seen in his loft in Brussel. Part of his thinking and his commentaries about the art he encounters can be followed on Twitter.
www.twitter.com/aservais1

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20 four 7 – Collecting The New Contemporary
The conversations with highly respected art collectors are focused on the issue of collecting as a big narrative.

Art works comprehend in their visual form a concentrated analysis of the world. Since art refrains from the practical constraints of daily life, it mediates a confident view onto the world, a world view. Every work of art is in itself a small unrivaled story. Collectors of contemporary art write a grandiose novel with intertwined story lines. They draft a narration without using language and text but through the sensual and visual immediacy of art works and their references among each other.

Behind each collection of contemporary art stands an exceptionally gifted tale-teller. It is exactly these stories that we want to talk and hear about at 20 four 7 – Collecting The New Contemporary.