The Art Bystander

• #34 Paris Photo

  Welcome back to The Art Bystander, the podcast that explores the stories, ideas, and people shaping the world of contemporary art. Our host Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar is taking you behind the scenes of one of the most influential art fairs in the world — Paris Photo. Founded in 1997, it has become the leading international fair dedicated entirely to photography, a place where artists, collectors, curators, and institutions converge to celebrate and challenge the medium.Joining me are Florence Bourgeois, Director of Paris Photo, and Anna Planas, Artistic Director. Together, they’ve been redefining what a photography fair can be — expanding its cultural scope, international reach, and curatorial ambition.In this conversation, we’ll discuss the evolving role of photography in the art ecosystem, how Paris Photo bridges artistic and commercial worlds, and what it takes to curate a fair that remains both relevant and visionary. So whether you’re a collector, a photographer, or simply curious about how images shape our times — this episode is for you. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• #33 Francesca Grima

  Today on The Art Bystander, our host Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar is joined by Francesca Grima — Creative Director of GRIMA Jewellery, and the guardian of one of the most influential design legacies in modern jewellery.Her father, Andrew Grima, changed everything. Often called the father of modern jewellery, he treated gold like sculpture, embraced raw stones in their natural form, and pushed the art of adornment into the realm of architecture and abstraction. His pieces were worn by royalty, collected by icons, and displayed in major museums — yet his spirit always remained independent and quietly rebellious.Francesca has carried that legacy forward in her own way. Since taking over the house in 2007, she’s reimagined GRIMA as a contemporary atelier — producing small, handcrafted collections and bespoke pieces alongside her mother, Jojo. Each work still bears that unmistakable GRIMA DNA — sculptural, textured, and fearless — but now infused with Francesca’s own sensitivity to form, emotion, and modern life.In our conversation, we’ll talk about what it means to inherit and evolve a creative legacy, the emotional side of making wearable art, and how Francesca balances intuition, heritage, and innovation in a world that moves faster than ever. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• #32 Elliot Safra

  The art world is undergoing a profound transformation. Traditional models of collecting and dealing are giving way to new players, platforms, and hybrid business models that blur the lines between galleries, auction houses, advisors, and digital marketplaces. At The Art Bystander, we are closely following these shifts—where technology, luxury, and creativity intersect to redefine how art is experienced, bought, and sold.In this context, our host Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar is joined by Elliot Safra, a figure at the forefront of these changes. Safra is the co-founder of The Art Marketplace, an online platform facilitating global private sales, and the founder of AndArt Agency, a creative consultancy dedicated to building collaborations between luxury brands and the art world. With a background that includes leadership in the Chairman’s Office at Christie’s and as Senior Director of Global Strategy at Lévy Gorvy (now Lévy Gorvy Dayan), as well as early experience in Management Consulting and Private Equity, he brings a unique vantage point on how the evolving art economy is reshaping opportunities for collectors, brands, and cultural institutions alike. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• #31 Volta & Affordable Art Fair

  In this episode, our host Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar turns the spotlight on two art fairs that have each shaped the mid-tier ecosystem in distinct ways.The Affordable Art Fair, founded in London in 1999 by Will Ramsay, has grown into a global franchise with editions in over a dozen cities — from Hong Kong to Hamburg, New York to Stockholm. With its price cap of around €10,000, the fair has opened the art market to tens of thousands of new collectors and offered emerging artists a platform to reach international audiences. Representing AAF in this conversation is Carl-Wilhelm Hirsch, who has helped steward its mission of accessibility and growth.The Volta Art Fairs, launched in Basel in 2005, are known as the “discovery fair,” championing solo presentations and younger galleries that bring experimental voices to the fore. Active today in both Basel and New York, Volta has built a reputation as the place where collectors often encounter artists just before they break through. Here, we hear from Francesca Starling, who has been instrumental in shaping Volta’s evolving vision.Together, these two fairs embody a vital counterpoint to the mega-fairs that dominate headlines. They prioritize intimacy, accessibility, and discovery — serving as laboratories where new collector generations are nurtured and where artistic risk-taking remains possible.As always, I’m fascinated by how the future of the art market unfolds, and conversations like this reveal how fairs at this scale — human, innovative, and open — might shape the next chapter of global collecting. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• #30 Brenda Weischer

  In this episode of The Art Bystander, the host Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar, is meeting a guest who is one of the most distinctive cultural commentators of her generation: Brenda Weischer, known to many simply as BrendaHashtag.Brenda is a writer, editor, and podcaster whose work moves fluidly between fashion and art. A graduate of Central Saint Martins in London, she has always approached fashion less as a marketplace and more as a form of cultural language and archive.She first made her mark with Disruptive Berlin, a project that treated vintage fashion as living cultural memory. Later, during her time as Fashion Editor at 032c, she developed Brenda’s Business—a series of interviews and essays that quickly became essential reading for their fearless look at designers and creatives through the lens of philosophy, critique, and cultural storytelling.At the same time, she built a wide audience as BrendaHashtag—a voice that is direct, unfiltered, and unmistakably her own. Her sharp commentary, minimalist aesthetic, and instinct for connecting fashion back to art, identity, and culture have made her a reference point far beyond the fashion industry.Today, through her own podcast Brenda Awareness, she continues to create dialogues that are as much cultural reflections as they are interviews.What fascinates me about Brenda is the clarity of her vision: she doesn’t play a role, she embodies it. She shows us how fashion, writing, and culture can merge into one continuous practice of thinking and making. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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