EDITORIAL # 63
MY PERFECT DAY
Michael Callies
Wilfried & Yannicke Cooreman
Verena Glup
Valérie Knoll
Dietmar Lutz
Kolja Reichert
Carolin Scharpff-Striebich
Michael Callies
Founder dépendance gallery, Brussels

It’s almost impossible to describe a perfect day. The day usually starts somehow and of course you can’t predict how it will end. I never actually have any expectations of what the day might be like. Things just happen. It’s a bit like the weather, I don’t really mind if it rains or if the sun is blazing. Are perfect days also beautiful days? Probably. I can’t just describe a day as it usually happens in my life. Who cares about that? I suppose the point is that, like all other days, you can’t hold on to them. They pass like life and the memory remains. Somehow, every day is perfect. Some more, some less. As I’m not too perfect myself, I’m already looking forward to the next day.
Wilfried & Yannicke Cooreman
Collectors, Puurs, Belgium

Afterall, a perfect day is very personally. When we are not traveling and depending on the weather, our perfect day starts with coffee and the newspaper on our terrace, the day is finished off with a glass of wine or a Belgian beer. We consider the greater part of our days as perfect. We collect since the ages, we have been busy with our passion, collecting art and visiting exhibitions, almost our entire life. Each sculpture or painting or photograph evokes memories of a past, which are reflected in the works collected. These souvenirs of the past are bringing back and give rise to our meetings, discussions with artists, curators, gallerists… One of these perfect days can be described as follows, we visited Gallery Ghislaine Hussenot – Paris, early morning of December 6th, 1990 by car, for an exhibition by Juan Munoz. We acquired his work ‘Malmö Balcony I’. Juan Munoz was present and we invited him for a lunch in a restaurant near Centre Pompidou. After the lunch we left Paris for a trip to Van Abbe Museum Eindhoven and the opening of an exhibition by Jan Vercruysse. These two exhibitions on the same day covered 1.000 km. Another perfect day which is still in our mind was a visit to the private house of Monika and Ulrike Schmela – Düsseldorf on a Friday in June 1982. At that moment I worked for a Scottish company and I reported, still by telex, the financial results to our Company Secretary in Edinburgh. I called our Secretary with the plea, if he had questions not to discuss too long, because I was planning my visit to Düsseldorf, it was mouse-still at the phone… a few seconds later his reaction was… Düsseldorf, that’s Germany. A recent perfect day: at the Festival des Arts Brussels, we met Danh Vo, where he showed a vintage FIAT hearse from the 70s. This car evokes associations with death, the car was transformed into a mobile flower shop and was given a new life. It was an unseen assemblage. Fifteen volunteers, auto mechanics helped him to realize the project. We are now looking forward to our next perfect day, the exhibition of Thomas Schütte at Moma in September 2024. A great part of our life is filled with perfect days, our goal is that we will be able to say at the end of our life, we have lived.
Verena Glup
Founder “Oh Vintage” in Cologne &
creative director “KORG Berlin”, lives in Cologne

Normally, I can’t sleep in, but today I doze until 10am. I slowly wake up with a quick wash. My 7-year-old son is already dressed, including brushing his teeth, and he serves me a huge bowl of fruit with full-fat Greek yogurt, lots of honey, and vanilla sugar. Then I stroll over to Kaffeebar at Ubierring in Cologne, to meet my friends Resi and Lorena. We chat about how wonderful our husbands are, and I share my plans to open a second branch of my vintage store “Oh” in Paris. I’ve already found a store manager, Jean-Claude. We get a craving for bagels and impulsively book a flight to New York. There is a new airplane by Deutsche Bahn, called “Lichtgeschwindigkeit.” Shortly after, we find ourselves at Broad Nosh on 58th Street, eating the most delicious sesame bagels with salmon and avocado. On the way to The Met, we bump into an old friend who tells us about a secret basement party with some of Detroit’s most legendary DJs, on that same night. We throw all our plans out the window and find ourselves on an intimate dance floor dancing to 160 bpm. Cologne is a lovely city to come back to.
Valérie Knoll
Director Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne

I don’t push my sleep mask (Zara Home) up. With my eyes obscured, I picture to myself the ships that rock my bed. I know that the slow-moving customs boat makes a gentle wave and the elongated transport ships are also soothing, that on this branch of the Elbe it’s only those weekend skippers pressing down the gas pedal of their motorboats that cause the houseboat to sway unpleasantly. At some point, I take the mulberry silk mask off and descend from the three-meter-high bed, as the coffee (Chicco D’Oro) is waiting below. The man summarizes the contents of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung for me. Now my gaze falls on the window cleaning robot (Hobot 198). Soon I’m watching the shoe-sized device washing the windows of the glass house. I like machines that do the work for me. At the site of my perfect day, cleanliness becomes primarily a question of exibitionism. As a curator at one with myself, I must face the question of whether or not I want to exhibit my naked body. The houseboat is largely made of glass and the shower is transparent. The arrangement is not without a certain charm, though not for every day. Today I won’t bathe. That’s what perfume is for (Freudian Wood). To put off going ashore for a while, I do some preparation with the man for the Udo Kier exhibition in the fall. Meanwhile, the afternoon is getting on. Everything’s going fine, though when I hear a loud ship upriver something is missing. Amid the screeching of the seagulls, I can make out the ‘sound of Cologne.’ A few minutes later, I get picked up by the MS Jacob, on which thirty Rhinelanders have ventured north—a company outing from Kompakt.
Dietmar Lutz
Artist, Düsseldorf and
Artistic Director Mataré-Haus, Meerbusch-Büderich

Happily painting away in the studio
Working and walking in the garden with André
Cycling along the rhine and ferrying across the river
Talking about this and that
with the fellows at Mataré-Haus
Kolja Reichert
Chief Curator K 21,
Kunstsammlung NRW, Düsseldorf

Weekdays: 6:15, breakfast and lunch are packed, a discounted MILES is right at my door, gym bag goes on the passenger seat. I’m partial to the mountain bike, but Düsseldorf is built for cars, and nothing beats the festive flight over the Rhein knee bridge with the river and the city at dawn. 80s80s on the radio, gym, office. Some exciting commitments from artists. Lunch with colleagues at the long table. A successful meeting with a partner on the sun terrace at Pardo’s. And in the afternoon, Space Afrika in my ears, finish writing up some concepts. Back over the bridge by bus, a walk along the bank. My wife already has guests. She publishes Arts of the Working Class, which helps to fund and elevate hundreds of impoverished vendors, and in this capacity she’s just today closed on an advertising deal with a hot jewelry label. Weekends: Sleep until half past ten, rolls from Schüren. Squirrels and parakeets on the balcony. A hike down the Rhine. Kimchi fried rice at Velvet, Sakuragiya ramen in the evening. For dessert, champagne pralines from Heinemann. For me, they symbolize all the exuberance and nonchalance of this generous city.
Carolin Scharpff-Striebich
Collector, Bonn

ENCOUNTERS…