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Hans Ulrich Obrist

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Obrist's peripatetic lifestyle — you can count on spotting him at every biennial of any significance, from Istanbul to Berlin to Gwangju — and compulsively prodigious output — you can count on one hand the significant contemporary artists and thinkers he hasn't interviewed — has earned him a reputation for being sleep-averse.

What's less known is that he has started a club for early bird art world movers and shakers like himself, appropriately called the Brutally Early Breakfast Club, which meets at various locations, usually coffee shops, at the brutally early time of 6:30 a.m. Even during the madness of Frieze, Obrist is maintaining the practice. On the morning Art Review's Power List was announced, Obrist could be found hobnobbing with his colleagues, bright and brutally early, in a Starbucks in Westbourne Grove.

And who are Obrist's fellow early risers? Past invite lists have included filmmaker Mike Figgis, artists Cerith Wyn Evans, Liam Gillick and Jake Chapman, curator and former Royal Academy exhibitions secretary Norman Rosenthal, and dealer Iwan Wirth.

Sarah Douglas is Senior Correspondent for Art+Auction, Modern Painters, and ARTINFO.

See all of ARTINFO's Frieze-related coverage here.