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ddm warehouse

52nd International Art Exhibition
La Biennale di Venezia

Migration Addicts
Curated by Biljana Ciric, Karin Gavassa

Urban interventions, Venice
6th through 15th June 2007

Opening party (by invitation) on June 7th 2007, from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m., at Orange Restaurant and Champagne Lounge, Campo Santa Margherita, featuring Rizman Putra The Hyperbolic Alpha Male performance, and Giorgio Pulini aka RACH3 live dj set.

Participating artists and sites: Htein Lin, (Myanmar), Campo San Barnaba; Jin Shan, (China), Campo San Polo; Li Pinghu, (China), Campo San Salvatore; Huang Kui, (China), Campo San Maurizio; Miljohn Ruperto, (Philippines / USA), Campo Sant’Angelo; Josefina Posch, (Sweden / USA), Campo Santo Stefano; Mogas Station, (Vietnam), Cultural Association Aurora Street, Caffè Aurora, Piazza San Marco, 48,49,50; TODO, (Italy), the town - starting point at Chiostro Ex Chiesa Santi Cosma e Damiano, Giudecca, 620; Belén Cerezo, (Spain), Campo San Bortolomio; Yap Sau Bin, (Malaysia), Cultural Association Aurora Street, Caffè Aurora, Piazza San Marco, 48,49,50; Hasan Elahi, (Bangladesh / USA), Campo Santa Margherita, Dorsoduro, 3054; Rizman Putra, (Singapore), Orange Restaurant & Champagne Lounge, Santa Margherita, Dorsoduro, 3054.

Migration Addicts began as an ongoing project two years ago in Shanghai, investigating how migration re-determines issues related to human identity, gender and spiritual needs. The fast expansion of urban spaces, following the model of big cities, has led to new social conflicts within the social structure.

Recently the tension between Western and Chinese traditional values and lifestyles, as well as the late arriving of capitalism and the persisting communism, have not hindered the Chinese impulse towards assimilating the “international standards”, while fostering its own economic development.

The project is touching upon topics which concern not only Shanghai but many other expanding Asian and Western cities. The structure of the exhibition is based on a series of interventions that will take place throughout the public space in Venice, articulating new perspectives entrenched directly in the urban environment, and methodologically operating in time and in space.

The exhibition investigates the questions of temporal and spatial strategies which deal with this situation. On political and aesthetic levels, these projects interact with people from outside artistic circles opening to the encounter with the unknown viewer, expanding the idea of art and its experience, to continue an engagement with the public sphere.

Venice is currently undergoing profound changes with respect to the urban landscape and its own future depends on the new structure it undertakes. More and more Venetians are leaving the lagoon to settle in other towns. In the next 30-40 years, it is certain that Venice’s population will be dramatically reduced.

The artists participating in Migration Addicts face through their own culture and artistic practices the topic of migration, providing a direct relationship with the public space where the exhibition is hosted, reflecting on the peculiarities of the territory, investigating differences and possible points in common.

Presented and organized by ddm warehouse, Shanghai, China

Collaborator:
Vision

Sponsors:
New Margin Ventures
ShanghArt Gallery, Shanghai
Creative Capital Foundation
Oriental Vista Art Collections
CCAA
N.O. Gallery-CONTEMPORARY ART, Milano

Media partner
DROME magazine
www.ionly.com.cn
art in culture
Art China
Art World
universes-in-universe.de
art.mofile.com
art monthly

Special thanks:
Cultural Association Aurora Street, Caffè Aurora, Venezia.
Stefano Coletto and the Atelier of Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venezia.
Galleria d’Arte Santo Stefano, Venezia.

Please check http://www.ddmwarehouse.org for updates.

For more information please contact:

biljana.ciric@gmail.com
karin.gavassa@gmail.com

For more information go to: http://www.ddmwarehouse.org

Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci

ANASTASIA KHOROSHILOVA,
ISLANDERS 2003-2006

Prato, 24 March – 20 May 2007
Opening 24 March, 5 pm

Exhibition curated by Stefano Pezzato

Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci
Viale della Repubblica 277 – Prato Italy
Open daily 10am-7pm, closed Tuesday
Entrance: free
For information: tel. +39 0574 5317
http://www.centropecci.it

The Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci is pleased to present Islanders 2003-2006, the first solo show in Italy of the Russian photographer Anastasia Khoroshilova.

A selection of 27 works, from four different series, will be displayed as a special project in the Theatre Room.

The young Russians photographed by Khoroshilova in their surroundings (rooms, corridors, gyms) or against neutral backgrounds (anonymous interiors, gardens) are automatically transposed to a general level of abstraction. The ‘meetings’ Khoroshilova set up, on her trips to Russia during and after her years studying at Duisburg/Essen University, have a documentary objectivity: the essential characteristics of samples of subjects in spontaneous poses that are never pre-established, facing the camera.

Khoroshilova’s portraits are immediately recognisable on account of the uniform: trainee dancers at the State Academy of Choreography (2003), young fighters at the gym Sambo 70 (2005) or young women in military uniform of 9.5% Plus (2005). They are members of institutions/symbols that echo a recent past of glorious achievement, success and power, now reduced to the role of Islanders, whose individual life begins where their collective identity ends; their identity is inexhorably fixed, as in photography, in the present. Not knowing anything about their personal lives, nor what their future holds, they appear to us to be clinging to the certainty of belonging, to the protection of the group and of history.

In the portraits of the last series Toys (2006) uniform is flanked by the presence of toys or games which reveal the simple child-like side of the subjects. The playful dimension on which the portraits draw, without the photographer suggesting as much, is the only possibility that the subjects possess to construct an identity, to be themselves.

In the private relationship with her subject, Khoroshilova records the person in front of her lens without passing judgment of any kind or resorting to lyricism or sentimentality. It is rather that her photographs tend to reveal the paradox that the subject of her portraits coincides with the ‘function’ or the place in which they are set, but behind this lies hidden great humanity suffused with emotions, needs, desires, fears, suffering and hope. There is no evidence of all this in the photography, only a latent evocation.

The exhibition is accompanied by a bilingual catalogue (Italian/English) with essay by the curator, Stefano Pezzato. Published by Centro per l’arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci.

Anastasia Khoroshilova, born in 1978 in Moscow, actually lives in Cologne.
Member in “The Russian Union of Art Photographers” since 1997, she graduated at the Photographic Department - University Duisburg/Essen.
She had solo shows at Ernst Hilger Gallery, Vienna; Fucares Gallery, Madrid; Museum Sacharov-Center, Moscow; Bumpodo Gallery, Tokyo; Klementinum, Prague; Corkin Shopland Gallery, Toronto; The State Russian Museum (Marble Palace), St. Petersburg.

Exhibition tour
Kunsthalle Lingen, 22 July – 23 September 2007

For more information go to: http://www.centropecci.it

pan palazzo delle arti napoli

Heroes! Like Us…?
April 5th –June 26th 2007

Marina Abramovic, AES + F, Boisseau/Westermeyer, Anton Corbijn, Kathryn Cornelius, Marco Giovani, Charlotte Ginsborg, Ilya Kabakov, Peter Kees, Sigalit Landau, Yerbossyn Meldibekov, Trine Neesdrad, Emily Prince, Tom Sanford, Nedko Solakov, Pierrik Sorin, Adrian Tranquilli, Sislej Xhafa, Hu Yang

Talking about heroes nowadays may seem out of place, at the most it could appear romantic. But have we left the time of heroes behind us? Is it really all over?

Modern sociology labels our era "post-heroic" though. Ours is an age where there is a growing need to develop group strategies; the “us” is becoming more and more important.

The very same sociology teaches us that human beings need models to follow. And so now we find that film, TV stars, sportsmen have replaced erstwhile heroes.

But they are figures with no specific temporal or geographic context. The product of this frenzied fantasy features characters that reflect our dreams but are unable to heal our faith in real heroism.

pan palazzo delle arti napoli
via dei mille 60
80122 napoli
+39 081 795 86 43
http://www.palazzoartinapoli.net

For more information go to: http://www.palazzoartinapoli.net