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 portfolio of cultural, strategic, and advisory initiatives at the intersection of art, business, and technology. He is co-founder of Art Market Minds, including the course AI & The Art Market, which explores how AI is beginning to reshape structures, behaviours, and opportunities across the industry.

Alongside this, Spiegler is a Visiting Professor at Bocconi University, where he teaches cultural management and the impact of artificial intelligence on the art world, and serves as President of the Board of Directors of Superblue, as well as Chairman of the Advisory Board of the future UBS Digital Art Museum. Spiegler collaborates with the Luma Foundation, sits on the boards of the ArtTech Foundation and Art Explora Foundation, and advises companies including Prada Group, KEF, and Sanlorenzo on cultural strategy.

In this conversation, we trace that full arc—from journalism to Art Basel to AMM—and what it reveals about the structural shifts shaping the art world today.

Also mentioned in the episode New York Real Estate and the Ruin of American Art and Will AI Slop and Deep Fakes Kill Culture.

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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 broader European and global context.

Before founding Makasiini, Frej was closely connected to the Finnish gallery landscape through Galerie Forsblom, gaining early insight into the mechanics of building and sustaining an international gallery program. With Makasiini, however, he has shaped a distinct identity — one that is less tied to legacy structures and more attuned to the shifts in how artists, galleries, and collectors operate today.

The gallery’s program spans painting, sculpture, and conceptual practices, with a particular sensitivity to materiality, narrative, and emerging artistic voices. At the same time, it reflects a strategic understanding of how to operate from a smaller market like Finland while remaining globally relevant.

In this conversation, Frej Forsblom speaks about building a gallery from the ground up, the realities of working within the Nordic ecosystem, and the evolving role of the gallerist in a market that is increasingly international, network-driven, and relationship-based. We also touch on artist development, collector behaviour, and what it takes to create momentum beyond the traditional centres of the art world.

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In this episode of The Art Bystander, host Roland-Philippe Kretzschmar sits down with Daniel Arsham, one of the most influential contemporary artists working today — an artist whose work treats the present as if it were already history. Arsham is internationally known for what he calls “fictional archaeology”: sculptures, objects, and environments that imagine contemporary culture as relics of the future — eroded, crystallized, and excavated from time yet to come.

Born in Cleveland, raised in Miami, and educated at The Cooper Union in New York, Arsham has built a practice that moves fluidly between fine art, architecture, design, fashion, and popular culture. His work is held in major museum collections around the world and has reached audiences far beyond the traditional art world, shaping how an entire generation encounters contemporary art.

With his recent book Future Relic, Arsham turns the lens inward. The book offers a rare and unvarnished account of what it actually takes to build a life in art — the failures, detours, discipline, and belief that exist behind the finished works we usually encounter only at the end of the journey.

From photographing the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew as a teenager in Miami, to formative years at Cooper Union, to collaborations with Merce Cunningham, Pharrell Williams, Christian Dior, and the Cleveland Cavaliers, Arsham shares the experiences that shaped both his work and his worldview.

Future Relic is not a romanticized memoir. It’s closer to a masterclass — a brutally honest guide to the realities of building a creative life. Arsham speaks candidly about the grind behind the work: how to find a gallery, why having the right lawyer matters, how to think like a creative entrepreneur, and why surrounding yourself with ambitious people is essential.

In this conversation, we talk about time, ambition, rejection, visibility, and the long game of making art — not just objects, but a practice capable of enduring.

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