The Art Bystander

Maitha Abdalla on folklore, guilt and the landscapes she paints. At her grandmother’s house in Khorfakkan, Maitha Abdalla remembers waking to the call to prayer, her grandmother’s voice and a rooster she had been taught could see angels. Years later she gave the bird a companion in her paintings. The rooster and the pig might fight, hold a conversation or become intimate. Both, she says, are her....

Juergen Teller and Dovile Drizyte join Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar for a conversation about the creative partnership at the centre of their shared life. From his portraits of Kate Moss and Kurt Cobain to his collaborations with Marc Jacobs, Helmut Lang and Vivienne Westwood, Teller has developed one of photography’s most recognisable approaches. Here, he and Drizyte discuss how working together ch...

Isabelle Zetterström on painting the inner world. In her London studio, British-Swedish artist Isabelle Zetterström joins Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar to discuss the imagined landscapes through which she explores emotion, memory and the changing self. Recorded in October 2026, the conversation begins with a new series of paintings made for Stockholm. Zetterström describes using light and shadow to...

Jenny Palén on dreams and making art before understanding it. In her studio outside Stockholm, artist Jenny Palén joins Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar for a conversation about the images that arrive before their meaning becomes clear. Moving between painting, sculpture, film, textiles and scenography, Palén follows an idea before deciding what form it needs. Sometimes, she only understands what a wor...

Omar Kholeif has curated more than 100 exhibitions and written or edited over forty books. Showing their own paintings under their own name, however, meant giving up something they had wanted to keep private. Recorded at Kholeif’s home in East London, this episode of The Art Bystander brings Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar into conversation with the artist, author, curator and broadcaster about the ex...

Jordan Roth spent years helping other people bring their creative visions to the stage. Eventually, he began to miss his own. His route back started with something he could practise every day: getting dressed. Recorded in Paris during Art Basel week in October 2026, this episode brings together the artist, actor and seven-time Tony Award-winning theatre producer and designer Adam Charlap Hyman for...

You can love a work of art and still question its price. You can support an artist and still want to understand what happens when you need to sell. In this episode of The Art Bystander, Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar joins collector and Artscapy co-founder Emilia De Stasio in London for a conversation about the emotional convictions and financial decisions that shape a collection. With a background s...

What happens when you spend enough time with a painting to imagine living with it? In this episode of The Art Bystander, our host Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar speak with David Rothschild, Sotheby’s Head of Contemporary Art Private Sales in the UK and Global Lead for Private Sales Exhibitions, and Valerio Polimeno , founder of _POLIMENO, about Chez Sotheby’s. Taking place from 19–24 October during A...

Collector Karen Boros joins Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar in the latest episode of The Art Bystander podcast. Karen Boros and her husband Christian began by collecting artists of their own generation. As they grew older, they made a deliberate decision to keep following younger artists, eventually those of their son’s generation. Collecting became a way of staying engaged with experiences and ideas...

Lidewij Edelkoort on how long trends really take “Most of the time we only work on the long-term trend. Because the short TikTok things, for a few weeks, are not really interesting in the long run. They just give shape to the big movement. Recently, I showed my books to a publisher and we came to the conclusion that most trends take 20 to 25 years to arrive and to really blossom.” What happens whe...

What changes when an artist runs a gallery? Recorded inside 2 Mira Archiv in Madrid, this episode of The Art Bystander Podcast brings Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar together with Spanish artist and gallerist Mira Bernabeu, founder of 1 Mira Madrid and an archive space dedicated to conserving, digitising and exhibiting cultural material. Bernabeu’s career connects the making of images with the practic...

In Berlin, a gallery floor is disappearing, one stone at a time. In this episode of The Art Bystander Podcast, Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar meets Michael Sailstorfer at Galerie Judin’s Mercator Höfe space for a conversation about artistic freedom, physical labour and the uncertainty that runs through the German artist’s latest installation, Pull the Rug. Around 11,000 paving stones cover the exhibi...

In this episode of The Art Bystander Podcast, Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar is joined by Erwin Wurm on the occasion of Mind Bubbles & More at Carling Dalenson in Stockholm, running from 22 September to 31 October 2026. One could easily say Erwin Wurm is one of the world's most recognized and respected artists today. Born in Bruck an der Mur, Austria, in 1954, Wurm has spent more than four decade...

“If I was going to open a gallery, it needed to have a very personal identity.” I met Cy Schnabel at Villa Magdalena in Madrid during Apertura Madrid Gallery Weekend to record a conversation for The Art Bystander podcast. Born in New York in 1993 to Julian Schnabel and Basque designer Olatz López Garmendia, Cy grew up around artists, filmmakers and musicians, with access to his father’s studio fro...

Berlin’s cultural power was built on cheap space, unfinished buildings and artists willing to live precariously. The city is wealthier now, but can the people who created its value still afford to remain? For this episode of The Art Bystander Podcast, Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar speaks with Philipp Solf, entrepreneur, collector and one of the people behind Wilhelm Hallen and HALLEN 07 , and Dr Ann...

In this episode of The Art Bystander, Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar enters a conversation with Michèle Lamy and Scarlett Rouge. Michèle Lamy is often introduced in relation to Rick Owens, but that has always felt like an incomplete way of understanding her. Born in France’s Jura region in 1944, into a family shaped by the Resistance, Lamy studied law in Lyon, attended the philosophy lectures of Gill...

In today's episode Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar meets with design legend Michele De Lucchi. Born an identical twin, he grew up being treated, as he remembers it, almost as half of the same child. At 18, the brothers chose different disciplines, different cities and different appearances. His brother shaved; Michele grew the beard that has stayed with him ever since. “When you design something, you...

In this episode of The Art Bystander Podcast, I speak with Jérôme Pantalacci, founder and director of Art-o-rama in Marseille. At the end of August, I will travel to Marseille for Art-o-rama, a fair that has developed one of the most distinctive identities on the European art calendar. Founded by Jérôme in 2007, Art-o-rama has become known for its concentrated scale, its commitment to emerging gal...

For this summer episode, I’m joined by The Art Daddy for their first-ever interview. The Art Daddy is a New York City-based art and culture reporter, critic, educator and artist who has spent more than a decade covering the contemporary art world. Their writing has appeared in The Art Newspaper, ELLE, ARTnews, Artnet News and many other publications, and they have taught and lectured at universiti...

In this episode, our host Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar is joined by Miramar Al-Nayyar , the Iraqi artist whose UK solo debut opens today (July 3, 2026) at Saatchi Yates in London. Miramar is the inaugural winner of the Saatchi Yates Fellowship Prize, selected from more than 5,000 submissions worldwide. She is 29, based between Amman and Abu Dhabi, and paints with a maturity that shows in her comman...

I'm speaking today with Lea Bischofberger , a Zurich-based gallerist and art dealer whose life and work are bound up with one of the most remarkable legacies in postwar and contemporary art. The Bischofberger name runs through some of the defining artistic relationships of the late twentieth century. Her father, Bruno (who passed away in late spring 2026), was a legendary gallerist who worked with...

Today, Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar is joined by Nadya Tolokonnikova — conceptual artist, musician, activist, wanted criminal, and one of the founders of Pussy Riot, the Russian feminist protest-art collective formed in Moscow in 2011. Tolokonnikova spent nearly two years in a Russian prison after Pussy Riot’s 2012 performance Punk Prayer inside Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour — an action...

In this episode, Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar speaks with Galerie Nordenhake about the role of the gallery today, the importance of sustained artist relationships, and how a gallery with Nordic roots continues to operate within an increasingly global contemporary art world. Founded by Claes Nordenhake in Malmö in 1976 (meaning celebrating 50 yr in 2026), Galerie Nordenhake is one of Scandinavia’s m...

In this episode of The Art Bystander , our host Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar is joined by Marc Spiegler , one of the key figures shaping the global art market over the past decade. Having led Art Basel from 2007 to 2022, he helped transform the fair from a marketplace into a global cultural platform—redefining how art is experienced, communicated, and sold. Today, Spiegler operates across a portfol...

In this episode, Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar meets with Frej Forsblom a Finnish gallerist and the founder of Makasiini Contemporary , which he established in Turku in 2016. With a clear international outlook from the outset, Makasiini has developed into one of the more dynamic contemporary art platforms in Finland, working with a new generation of artists while actively positioning them within a b...