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Rolf Osang
Tapping a goldmine
Less than two months ago, travel writer and art connoisseur Rolf Osang, 62, opened the largest centre for art in the Algarve. Located in Lagoa’s run-down “Adega Cooperativa” winery, it has hundreds of square metres of space, and is rapidly attracting scores of artists. An average of two new artists from the Algarve and from all over Europe are contacting the gallery (in person or via email) every day to see if they can show their work and get involved, and in just eight weeks, Osang has managed to sell “a surprising number” of pieces, sculptures included. But this is just the beginning. Osang’s dream is all about tapping a goldmine: creating a niche-market in the Algarve that will benefit everyone – and the beauty of it, he says, is there’s almost zero need for investment…
Natasha Donn, Edition 697 (29 Sep 2011), 
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Tell us about your dream.
We have everything here in the Algarve for a successful art market: we have the artists, we have all the infrastructures to welcome people who want to buy art, or take art courses or come on art holidays - and we have the climate! We are basically sitting on a goldmine – if only people would open their eyes!
The Algarve Tourist Board, for example, simply doesn’t get it at all – even though I have had meetings with them, explaining how art tourism works let’s say in Tuscany, or in Southern France: people travel from all over the world to go on art holidays to these locations.
They could be coming here! But no, the tourist board talks about bird-watching and diving (which, of course are excellent niches but both need tens of thousands of euros of investment) - when creating an art market would not cost a penny! We already have the hotels, the restaurants and everything here for people to feel comfortable. We have excellent teachers, and now we have in the Adega the perfect centre!
What are your plans for this huge new space?
We have various sections in the gallery: one for monthly exhibitions of a well-known artist (on October 8th, for instance, we’ll be featuring Saulo Silveira), then we have a huge space with art for sale over more than 1000 square metres, and on the other side of the building we’re planning to open the “Academia Arte Algarve” - an excellent art school.
The idea is to run fixed classes in the mornings, and then leave the afternoons open to art clubs: groups on holiday with their teachers, or to private teachers, etc. Downstairs in the basement, there’s another 600 square metre area which, ideally, we’d like to develop for stage plays, concerts and ballets.
And this is really all possible with no investment?
Very little money is needed. I have been talking about this - dreaming of this - for three years now, since starting the Arte Algarve art fair and realizing that a fair once or twice a year is not enough to create a market. What we needed was a place like this – to take things forward.
I am totally confident it will work. For example, since launching our website, some of the artists involved have had more than 100.000 clicks per picture! We’re averaging 600 clicks per day. That makes us one of the most popular websites in Portugal!
How do you select the art that you sell?
That’s still very much in development. I don’t believe in “good” or “bad” art. Art is really democratic and as long as people know their basic techniques, they should be able to do what they want to do.
But now that we’re getting so many artists coming to us, we’re going to introduce a selection process, which should lift the level of work on offer. Oh, and we do have one rule: no religious art! It’s not that I’m not a believer, it’s just that I feel it has been done to death.
