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Tobias Kaspar and Tobi Maier
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Q&A with Tobi Maier – On Fastback Intimacy and Uncanny Pairings
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For a little more than two years, Tobi Maier, previously at Ludlow 38, the São Paulo Biennial and director of Lisbon’s Municipal Galleries, has been Chief Curator of Amant in New York and also serves on the advisory board of PROVENCE.
Tobi Maier and PROVENCE founding member artist Tobias Kaspar spent a Friday morning together in Venice. Somewhere between vaporetto rides, although in fact they mostly walked everywhere, exhibition openings and espresso stops, Tobias - which one? - realised he had seen himself reflected for the first time inside a Richard Prince exhibition.
The two first met years ago in Frankfurt while playing football together, one as an art student, the other as curator of the local Kunstverein. Later they reconnected for several projects, including offering Tobi’s São Paulo apartment for sale as an artwork and developing a clothing collection out of his own wardrobe.
But this is not about them. Or perhaps only indirectly.
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Tobias Kaspar: At Fondazione Prada we saw Richard Prince paired with Arthur Jafa. You mentioned having recently seen a stellar Prince exhibition in New York, as well as new works by Cady Noland at Gagosian in 2025. Could a pairing between Jafa and Noland perhaps have been more interesting? What do you think brought Noland back to producing new work after decades of near absence?
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Tobi Maier: Interesting idea. I mentioned this particular cadence, as Prince's show of Cigarette paintings (Folk Songs, November 6-December 20, 2025) immediately followed Noland's exhibition of new works (September 10-October 18, 2025) at Gagosian's 555 West 24th Street location in New York. I could not help myself but read them in tandem. Noland's presentation of new work was clearly accentuated by Sale signs, so I believe the intention was obvious, which did not lessen my excitement and I visited the show twice. Jafa's work has also been on view frequently with exhibitions at 52 Walker and Gladstone, the latter featuring an expansive installation of ***** - his remake of Taxi Driver (1976) - which was also shown in Venice. Then there is also the exhibtion Less is Morbid that Jafa curated within the framework of MoMA Artist's Choice exhibition, which included a work by Prince (Tell Me Everything, 1987). It is part of the priviledge of living in New York again to be able to see all these (one-person) exhibitions, but I am not sure if the curatorial exercise of pairing Jafa and Prince in Helter Skelter at Fondazione Prada was too rewarding for me, beyond the fact that it reflects on American systemic violence - in the setting of a Venice palace.
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TK: At the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation we saw Lydia Ourahmane together. Excellent exhibition. The smell of soup. A one euro church light system. Endless white laundry. It was one of my highlights in Venice until I read in the press release that Lydia “lives in Venice”, when in fact she had only been there for a three month residency. Suddenly many of the local references felt strangely accelerated to me, almost like a fast track intimacy produced for the art world. I hope you disagree.
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TM: I “lived” in Venice for almost six weeks during a residency in 2024 and upon invitation from the Emily Harvey Foundation. Once you start pacing through the alleys - and shop for groceries - you kind of feel like a local. Of course you are not. Here in NY there seems to be no tourism compared to a few years ago, but I sympathize with Ourahmane, who seems to be based in Barcelona. So much of the sensibilities reflected in 5 Works at the Nicoletta Fiorucci Foundation are probably grounded in observations the artist also made there. Barcelona fought back against aggressive overtourism and vacation rental platforms, an action that other cities - like Venice or Lisbon for that matter - could replicate.
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TK: Even though we signed up for the Dries Van Noten Foundation we never made it in. I was not patient enough to wait in line for thirty minutes. Did you eventually go back?
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TM: It was a memorable line, also because we were temporarily joined by our friend Axel Wieder. I was curious to see the Dries Van Noten collection display with you for a number of reasons. Most recently we organized solo shows with the collective Women’s History Museum and CFGNY at Amant, both working on the interstices of fashion and art. So I wanted to see what Noten would do. Second, you and me, we have this history of fashion inspired projects that we worked on together during TWO CITIES - TWO LIVES SOLO SHOWS in Sao Paulo and at the now defunct Frey Kalioubi in Rio de Janeiro (2015) and prior to that with Friends, Lovers and Financiers (2014) at PER4M at Artissima in Torino. A visit could inspire another collaboration. Finally, around 2002 or 2003, I modeled for a Belgian brand in the lower ground floor of Centre Pompidou, Paris and I am still trying to figure out which brand it was. I thought a visit could be helpful to spur my memory, but we were denied entry and I did not have time to return to their palace.
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TK: Was Ei Arakawa-Nash’s Japanese pavilion, Florentina Holzinger’s work, co-produced by Amant, or perhaps Bogna Burska and Daniel Kotowski’s Liquid Tongues your favourite pavilion or project this year? Or was it something completely different?
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TM: With Ei we had the very special opportunity to work on Looking at Listening, a joint project with Sergei Tcherepnin in the Casa Modernista - Brazil's first modernist mansion - for the 30th Sao Paulo Biennial in 2012. Sadly, I missed Sergei's concert in Venice because it was shifted to Saturday due to the protests. Sergei told me that his concert alluded to Maryanne Amacher, and I think it would have opened up another conceptual angle in Ei's Venice pavillion for me. I was impressed with Dries Verhoeven's performance The Fortress at the Belgian Pavilion and Marina Xenofontos exhibition in the Cypress Pavilion, too. But, I am biased because at Amant we are supporting Florentina Holzinger and curator Nora-Swantje Almes with their sensational Seaworld Venice, a version of which will be touring to Brooklyn during spring 2028!
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TK: Death in Venice. Goodbye mass tourism. What did you read on the flight back to New York?
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TM: See the above on mass tourism and how to deal with it. I left Venice on a 6.55am flight to Brussels in order to see the Lutz Bacher show at WIELS and visit Fernando Marques Penteado in the studio, so I did not read anything - only slept. On the plane to JFK, I read the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, The Financial Times and Jeff Wall Production’s Submission Declined, a new title out from lpdr, written by curator and essayist Pierre Bal-Blanc, one of our guests this summer at Amant’s residency program in the hamlet of Chiusure, Tuscany. Come and visit us there!
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Annette Amberg, director of Kunsthaus Glarus. Photo by Flavio Karrer.
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Iouri Podlatchikov. Photo by Iouri Podlatchikov.
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