Beyond the Explainable: How Dresden's NEUE ART Fair Creates a New Magic for Art

NEUE ART 2025: Art as an Act of the Unknown
DRESDEN – The quote by Christoph Schlingensief — "Art only becomes interesting when we are confronted with something we cannot immediately explain completely" — hangs in the air of the MESSE DRESDEN exhibition halls. This is not merely an epigraph for the catalogue; it is the DNA of the NEUE ART 2025 fair, which for the ninth time challenges the conventional categories of the art market.

From September 26 to 28, the industrial halls of Pavilion No. 2 will transform into a "magical place" where, according to the curators' vision, art and passion are meant to merge. This is not just a commercial platform but rather an intellectual and emotional testing ground. Here, around a hundred artists and gallerists from Germany and neighboring countries offer not just objects for purchase, but an opportunity to be "seduced" — an ambitious word the organizers use without quotation marks in everyday speech.

Since 2016, the mission of NEUE ART has remained unchanged: to present non-traditional art in all its genre diversity, offering the public an unbiased, direct access to the thoughts and feelings of the creators. The result is an atmosphere that can only be described as electric. It is that particular magic where painting, sculpture, photography, and design cease to be mere exhibits and begin to live their own lives within the relaxed, almost authentic space.

This year, the heart of the fair is the "Mix & Match" project — not just a section, but a bold curatorial statement. It is an interactive laboratory where students from the renowned Dresden Academy of Fine Arts (HfBK Dresden) engage in a dialogue with established professionals and the visitors themselves.
"Mix & Match is more than just a title; it is a mode of working," the curators note. Under the guidance of Erika Richter, the project challenges the very notion of authorship. The idea is to show, through collaboration and cross-media experiments, how a work transforms when different voices collide. It is an invitation to co-creation and to reflect on whether art born from dialogue can be more vibrant and alive than art created in solitude.

The fair consciously positions itself not as a mandatory event in the art calendar, but as a reason for an extraordinary weekend in the "Florence on the Elbe." The city, with its Baroque heritage, becomes the perfect counterpoint to the bold contemporary statements within the industrial walls. This is a strategic choice: to create a holistic experience where visiting the fair becomes part of a journey to a city of art and culture.

NEUE ART 2025 is a rare type of art event that is not afraid to be humane. It does not strive to overwhelm with scale or big names but invites you to slow down, feel its warm invitation, and allow yourself to encounter something that defies immediate explanation. And in that, perhaps, lies its greatest value.

Your guide to the world of great art, ART EXPO WORLD. Additional reporting by Marcus Turner