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Argentine Pavilion

GUILLERMO KUITCA TO REPRESENT ARGENTINA IN 52ND INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION, VENICE BIENNALE

Guillermo Kuitca: Si Yo Fuera El Invierno Mismo (If I Were Winter Itself)

Ateneo Veneto
Campo San Fantin, San Marco 1897, Venezia
(By Teatro La Fenice)
From 10 June to 23 September 2007
Tuesday through Sunday 10 am – 6 pm
Press Preview: 7 - 9 June 2007, 10 am – 8 pm

Internationally acclaimed artist Guillermo Kuitca will represent Argentina in the 52nd Venice Biennale 2007. Housed in the early 17th-century Ateneo Veneto, located near the opera house La Fenice in Campo San Fantin, the Argentine Pavilion will be open to the public from 10 June through 23 September 2007. The artist has created four large-scale paintings specifically for this exhibition.

In addition to showing in the Argentine Pavilion, Guillermo Kuitca’s work will be represented significantly in Biennale Commissioner Robert Storr’s central international exhibition Think with the Senses—Feel With the Mind: Art in the Present Tense. Thirty-eight canvases from the artist’s ongoing “Diarios” series will be featured.

Sergio Baur, Counselor of the Directorate of Cultural Affairs of the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Worship, and Mercedes Parodi, Cultural Attaché to the Argentine Embassy in Italy, are Commissioners of the Pavilion, which is curated by Inés Katzenstein, Curator, Malba-Colección Costantini, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires.

Kuitca, who was Argentina’s representative at the 1989 São Paulo Bienal, says, “It has been many years since I officially represented my country in an exhibition. At this moment in my career, I must say being asked was unexpected. It was a happily surprising request—and one to which you must say yes!” He adds, “In the spirit of the Biennale I wanted to create something in a different direction, something that hasn’t much to do with my past work. I can’t think of a better venue than the Venice Biennale to do this, to reach back into art historical time and movements and create from these a new form, which will be shown for the first time in this extraordinary historically significant building and city. Also, it is a particularly great feeling to be in this one directed by Rob Storr, whom I respect so much.”

“This new series of paintings is a dramatic change in the work of Guillermo Kuitca,” comments Inés Katzenstein. “Instead of relying on technical codes of space representation — coming from either cartography or architecture—as he has done in previous works and series, he is for the first time referring to the history of modern painting; specifically to certain heroic moments of the history of abstraction.

“Presenting this new work in the context of the Venice Biennale is a meaningful, brave, and even polemic gesture,” she continues. “Moreover, since the consequences of the dialogue between this new work and the Baroque images of the Ateneo Veneto are uncertain, the whole project is both a challenge and an open proposal to how the art will interact.”

Upcoming Multi-venue Retrospective and Artist’s Biography

The first comprehensive retrospective of Guillermo Kuitca’s art to travel in the United States in fifteen years has been initiated by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, in association with the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Examining over two decades of the artist’s painting and including approximately 45 canvases and 20 works on paper made between 1982 and 2008, Guillermo Kuitca will open in June 2009 at the Hirshhorn Museum, and tour until 2011 to the Albright-Knox, the Miami Art Museum, and the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao.

Guillermo Kuitca is represented by Sperone Westwater, New York ( http://www.speronewestwater.com )

For additional information, please contact:
Glory Jones/Natalie Hoch/Christina Houghton
Resnicow Schroeder Associates
Phone: 212-671-5171/5170/5162
gjones@resnicowschroeder.com
nhoch@resnicowschroeder.com
choughton@resnicowschroeder.com

To obtain media credentials for the June 7, 8, and 9 vernissage and for other information about the Venice Biennale, please visit http://www.labiennale.org

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

EFA Gallery

Horizon
Curated by David Humphrey

June 1-July 27, 2007
Opening Reception, Friday, June 1, 6:00-8:00 pm

EFA Gallery
EFA Studio Center
323 West 39th Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10018
between 8th and 9th Avenues
Summer Hours:
Tues. through Fri., 12-6 PM

EFA Gallery announces a new exhibition curated by David Humphrey, "Horizon." The horizon is subjective, entirely determined by the position of the spectator. Because it has no independent existence it has become a symbol for a variety of thresholds: the visible, the thinkable and the knowable. Every artwork in this exhibition will have a horizon and will be abutted and aligned to adjacent works on it’s left and right so as to make one continuous horizon around the gallery. Horizons in pictures are always cropped fragments, which, nonetheless, confirm the spectator’s position at the center of his or her experience. This exhibition will tether every artist’s horizon with all the other’s to create an irrationally cooperative panorama, a heterogeneous continuity that weakens the boundaries between works while staging their differences.

Approximately 40 artists of all disciplines and career levels will be included in the exhibition including:
Bill Adams, Meredith Allen, Diti Almog, Ellen Altfest, Louise Belcourt, Brian Belott, Katherine Bradford, Benjamin Butler, Dana Carlson, Jennifer Coates, Adam Cvijanovic, Angela Dufresne, Nicole Eisenman, Judith Eisler, Rochelle Feinstein, Jeff Gauntt, EJ Hauser, Catherine Howe, James Hyde, Susan Jennings, Lisa Klapstock, Dorota Kolodziejczyk, Bill Komoski, Julian Kreimer, Michael Lazarus, Medrie MacPhee, Chris Martin, Suzanne McClelland, Elizaveta Meksin, Santi Moix, Donna Moylan, Laura Newman, Gary Petersen, Alexander Ross, Sally Ross, Frank Schroder, Kate Shepherd, Amy Sillman, Elena Sisto, Rebecca Smith, Eva Struble, Team SHaG, Len Tsvetkov, Stanley Whitney, Paula Wilson, and others…

David Humphrey is a curator and artist, born in Augsburg, Germany. He received a BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, MD, studied at the New York Studio School of Painting, Drawing, and Sculpture, and received an MA from NYU. Humphrey received a New York State CAPS grant, a New York State Council for the Arts Grant, and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Humphrey lives and works in New York and he has shown nationally and internationally. He is represented by Sikkema Jenkins & co in New York and will be exhibiting in November at Keith Talent Gallery in London.

Humphrey has curated exhibitions in New York and California, from Feigen Contemporary to KS Art to New York Academy of Art. As an artist Humphrey has also published articles in publications such as Art in America and Art issues. Humphrey is the host of the Internet radio show Sound and Vision on WPS1.org.

This exhibition is presented by the EFA Gallery, a program of The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. With additional support from The Helen Keeler Burke Charitable Foundation, Peter C. Gould, Materials for the Arts, and Carnegie Corporation Inc. and many generous individuals.

The EFA Gallery is a curatorial project space. Through the gallery, The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts supports the creative work of independent curators. Curators build the framework in which we understand artists and the art they make. At their best, they redefine how we look at culture. The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts believes in the essential importance of art in a civil society. The value of the artist’s creative spirit is not limited by age, race, nationality or acceptance by others.

For further information:
Elaine Tin Nyo, Director
T. 212-563-5855 x203, F. 212-563-1875
elaine@efa1.org

For more information go to: http://efa1.org/EFA/Programs.php

Lithuanian Pavilion

Lithuanian Pavilion
52nd International Art Exhibition –
La Biennale di Venezia

VILLA LITUANIA
Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas
http://www.villalituania.lt

Special event:
Villa Lituania International Pigeon Race
Pigeons’ liberation:
10.00 am Saturday 9 June, 2007
Launch site:
Campo S. Biagio (Arsenale)

Pavilion vernissage: 11.00 am Saturday 9 June
Ludoteca, Santa Maria Ausiliatrice
Castello 450, 30122 Venice

Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas’ project takes its title – Villa Lituania – and conceptual impetus from a grand house in Rome closely associated with the Lithuanian nation. Villa Lituania was the Embassy of the first independent Republic of Lithuania to Italy that became the possession of the USSR after its occupation of Lithuania in 1940. The keys to the property were handed by Italian governmental representatives to Soviet officials following the alliance of powers signaled by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the formation of the Republic of Lithuania the Villa has remained the property of Russia; operating as the Russian Consulate in Rome. It is considered the last occupied territory of Lithuania. For their Venice project the artists are proposing a symbolical restoration of Villa Lituania.

Working with pigeon fanciers in Italy and Lithuania, the artists are proposing to stage two pigeon races from a location at Campo S. Biagio in Venice. The first race is an international challenge race with birds racing to all points in Italy as well as Lithuania, Poland, and Russia. The second event is planned for the autumn of 2007 and is a special race from Venice to Rome. The race’s intention is clear – sending colomba della pace “doves of peace” to the occupied territory of Villa Lituania in Rome.

To achieve this, a pigeon-loft needs to be constructed in Rome. Pigeons’ metriculate the loft they make their first flight from as ‘home’ and always return to that location when released: hence ‘homing pigeon’. Once requests to build at Villa Lituania were effectively denied the artistic team turned their attention to the construction of a loft in a public park in Rome – engaging protocol heavy real politik. The fate of this element of Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas’ project hangs-in-the-balance.

The Pavilion exhibition documents the process so far, tells the fascinating story of Villa Lituania, and introduces an international audience to the important work that Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas have been making in Vilnius – protesting the encroachment by neo-liberal government and corporations on Lithuania’s public space.

Presented by the Contemporary Art Centre (CAC), Vilnius
Commissioner: Simon Rees
For more information contact: +370 5 260 89 60 / info@cac.lt / http://www.cac.lt
Principally funded by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania

For more information go to: http://www.villalituania.lt