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GAMeC

PREMIO LORENZO BONALDI PER L’ARTE – ENTERPRIZE, 4th edition
PRIZEGIVING
Tuesday, 5 June 2007 at 6.30 pm

QUI. ENTER ATLAS – INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM OF YOUNG CURATORS
3 - 4 - 5 June 2007
curated by Giacinto Di Pietrantonio, Philippe Van Cauteren, Alessandro Rabottini, Thibaut Verhoeven

ELDORADO.
PIETRO ROCCASALVA. TRUKA
curated by Alessandro Rabottini
OPENING
Tuesday, 5 June 2007 at 6.30 pm

One prize, one 3-days symposium and one show at GAMeC, Bergamo
For three days GAMeC will be the meeting point for a whole generation of international young curators: meetings and debates between 15 international curators suggested by 15 institutions and coordinated by the artist Dara Birnbaum to mark the award of Premio Lorenzo Bonaldi per l’Arte - EnterPrize. On the same occasion it will be opened the exhibition Pietro Roccasalva. Truka.

PREMIO LORENZO BONALDI PER L’ARTE – ENTERPRIZE, 4th edition
The Premio Lorenzo Bonaldi per l’Arte – EnterPrize, inaugurated in 2003 by the GAMeC and funded by the Bonaldi family to commemorate Lorenzo Bonaldi’s passion for art and collecting, has reached its fourth year.
This prize, the only one of its kind, is intended to support the work of a young curator under the age of 30 and his or her exhibition project.

GAMeC invited five advisors to nominate each one a young curator:
Sabine Breitwieser (Director Generali Foundation, Wien)
Rafael Doctor Roncero (Director Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León)
Tom Eccles, (Director Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, New York)
James Lingwood (Director Artangel, London)
Anton Vidokle (E-flux, New York – unitednationsplaza, Berlin)

The chosen curators are:
Binna Choi
Ovul Durmusoglu
Tom Morton
Manuela Moscoso
Ana Vejzovic Sharp

The projects will be assessed by a jury comprised by:
Dan Cameron (Director PROSPECT.1, New Orleans)
Ralph Rugoff (Director Hayward Gallery, London)
Giacinto Di Pietrantonio (Director GAMeC, Bergamo)

The prize consists in the execution of the winning project at GAMeC in 2008 and publication of a bilingual catalogue.

QUI. ENTER ATLAS – INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM OF YOUNG CURATORS
As part of the fourth Premio Lorenzo Bonaldi per l’Arte – EnterPrize, GAMeC organizes the second edition of Qui. Enter Atlas – International Symposium of Young Curators. The symposium has been organized by GAMeC and S.M.A.K., Gent that will host the second part of it on 19 - 20 - 21 October.

15 international curators under 35, suggested by 15 institutions, will share their experiences around the theme “Art in the Landscape of the Media” coordinated by the artist Dara Birnbaum.

The curators:
Cecilia Alemani (Independent Curator, New York)
Craig Buckley (Independent Curator, New York)
Sarah Carrington (Independent Curator, London)
Binna Choi (Independent Curator, Amsterdam – Seoul)
Sebastian Cichocki (Director Kronika – Contemporary Art Centre, Bytom – PL)
Ovul Durmusoglu (Independent Curator, Austria – Turkey)
Elena Filipovic (Co-Curator at the 5th Berlin Biennial)
Nav Haq (Curator Gasworks, London)
LATITUDES - Max Andrews & Mariana Cánepa Luna (Independent Curators and writers, Barcelona)
Tom Morton (Curator Cubitt Gallery, London)
Manuela Moscoso (Director los29enchufes, Madrid)
Huib Haye van Der Werf (Advisor Visual Arts for the Dutch Government)
Ana Vejzovic Sharp (Director Kantor Feuer Gallery, Los Angeles)
Nina Zimmer (Curator of 19th c. and 20th c. art Kunstmuseum, Basel)

The advisors:
Stacey Allan and Steven Rand (Apexart, New York)
Sabine Breitwieser (Generali Foundation, Wien)
Ann Demensteer (De Appel, Amsterdam)
Rafael Doctor Roncero (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León)
Yilmaz Dziewior (Kunstverein, Hamburg)
Tom Eccles (Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, New York)
Eva González-Sancho (Frac Bourgogne, Dijon)
Jens Hoffmann (Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco)
Maria Lind (IASPIS, International Artists Studio Program, Stockholm)
James Lingwood (Artangel, London)
Joanna Mytkowska (Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw)
Patrizia Sanderetto Re Rebaudengo (Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin)
Anton Vidokle (E-flux, New York – unitednationsplaza, Berlino)
Etienne Wynants (Etablissement d’en face projects, Bruxelles)

The symposium is organized with the support of: DARC – Direzione generale per l’architettura e l’arte contemporanee; The Henry Moore Foundation; The Instituto Cervantes; Mondriaan Foundation.

The convention programme will be published on http://www.gamec.it

ELDORADO. PIETRO ROCCASALVA. TRUKA
6 JUNE – 29 JULY 2007
The prizegiving will be followed by the opening of the solo show Pietro Roccasalva. Truka, the first one by a museum. For the occasion Roccasalva has produced three new works: a 35mm film, a sculpture and a large soft pastel.

The project will be documented in the first monograph of the artist, published by JRP I Ringier and including texts by B. Schwabsky and A. Rabottini and E. Gnemmi. The catalogue is promoted by the Fondazione Davide Halevim, Milan.

We are grateful to Zero…, Milan

GAMeC – Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo
via San Tomaso, 53
24121 Bergamo (Italy)
tel. +39 035 270272 – fax +39 035 236962
http://www.gamec.it

Press Office
CLP Relazioni Pubbliche
tel. +39 02 433403
http://www.clponline.it
e-mail: info@clponline.it

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

Catharinakapel

SHELTER 07: The Freedom of Public Art in the Cover of Urban Space

Harderwijk, The Netherlands
June 2 – August 31

Artistic Interventions by Lara Almarcegui, Tiong Ang, Ginette Blom, Gijs Frieling, Jeanne van Heeswijk (in collaboration wih Boris van Berkum), Job Koelewijn, Irene Kopelman and Mieke Van de Voort. Curator: Henk Slager

http://www.catharinakapel.nl/shelter07

The objective of the Shelter 07 project is to draw attention to the history of the Dutch city of Harderwijk. To achieve this goal, the genealogical significance of the name Harder-Wijk, "an elevated place offering a safe shelter to refugees in troublesome times", serves as the point of departure for the exhibition in public space. That genealogical significance causes notions such as safety and freedom to appear inextricably bound to Harderwijk’s history. But how did that connection arise? Is it still linked to a spatial, site-specific concept with phenomenological connotations of physicality? Or does a medial, discursive relationship transform the current concept of "place" into a textual issue, i.e., a notion of place as a platform of knowledge and intellectual exchange?

To investigate these questions further, eight artists have been invited to produce artistic research projects related to a number of significant locations chosen in collaboration with the historical society Herderewich. The artists were asked to develop specific proposals underscoring the above problematics in an artistic form. Interestingly, in their projects, a number of related issues and topics emerged.

In order to understand a location’s specificity, Lara Almarcegui employs an archeological method eliciting that precedes space, i.e., the granting of room. On the Blokhuisplein, a historical location renowned for its straightness and power, she will create a fallow field presenting a temporary autonomous zone as a dysfunctional, undefined, and unfounded space escaping the grid of geography. At the same time, the autonomous zone is able to shelter the experience of a total freedom of interpretation.

As a location for his intervention, Tiong Ang chose the former lodge of the duty officer of the colonial yard depot, the building where volunteers for the Dutch East Indies were recruited. The lodge is situated next to a monumental gate that, thanks to the house of ill repute once situated just outside, seamlessly connects two former literary worlds of bourgeois escapism: the reality of Keetje Tippel, a famous woman of easy virtue, recorded by Neel Doff; and the contours of colonial reality, sketched by Multatuli in Max Havelaar.

Ginette Blom’s intervention brings us back to a medieval conception of freedom incorporated to some extent in the double function of the 13th-century Vispoort (Fish Gate). As a crucial element in the fortress structure, this building served initially as a defensive post and lighthouse. However, at the gate’s sea-facing side, there was also a quay where fishermen could freely sell part of their catch. By means of a nighttime light projection on this historical location, a filmic memory of this pre-capitalist free trade site is evoked.

Gijs Frieling rewrites the history of the port as a freewheeling place of leisure in the form of an allegoric mural near the pier. Until the early 20th century, Harderwijk’s economic independence relied to a certain extent on the presence of the (fishing) port. With the arrival of the Zuiderzeewerken - turning the greater part of the South Sea into a polder - Harderwijk’s economy seemed to run aground. However, the sudden arrival of a group of dolphins at the dock entrance turned out to be the beginning of a new period of economic vigor.

Jeanne van Heeswijk (in collaboration with Boris van Berkum) developed a series of wallpapers placed on the bricked-up windows of old houses around the church square, retelling last century’s lingering tales: about the symbolic poet Rimbaud, who lost his identity as a poet during his stay in Harderwijk and vanished in the grand myth of the foreign legion; about the first big stream of (Belgian) refugees who found temporary shelter during World War I in camp Harderwijk; and about the circulating rumors of missing passports popping up during the transformation of the AZC (Refugee Center) Jan van Nassaukazerne into luxury condominiums, as proof of the search for shelter in a new, safe identity for its former inhabitants.

At the spot where, till the late 1970s, the strictly Protestant “church school” (Vismarktschool) was situated, the city of Harderwijk has recently constructed a natural water reservoir. Job Koelewijn considered this an ideal place for his intervention. He put the stream of rising water and all its connotations of Flood, chastening, and eternal return into the liberating perspective of some hundreds of Great Books.

In the City Museum, Irene Kopelman investigates the 18th-century position of the University of Harderwijk as refuge for thought through an artistic interpretation of Linnaeus’ botanical classification system. Just because this university did not choose for a dogmatic movement of thought but rather was open to a variety of epistemological perspectives, it was a safe haven for unorthodox intellectuals from all over Europe.

In the context of Shelter 07, Mieke Van de Voort stays temporarily in Harderwijk in the Zeebuurt area, where she develops a new work in a typical 1950s row house, icon of radical mediocrity. Here freedom seems to be entirely reduced to a one-dimensional concept. Yet, inevitably the question arises: could something cooked up in an anonymous row house ultimately prove meaningful for the balance between freedom and safety?

Parallel to the Shelter 07 presentations in urban public space, the Catharinakapel (Klooster 1) will serve as the source of Shelter 07 information during the summer of 2007, supplying information about the participating artists, the artistic research projects, the work processes and the historicity of the chosen locations.

For more information go to: http://www.catharinakapel.nl/shelter07

Dutch Pavilion

The Netherlands at the Venice Biennale 2007: Citizens and Subjects

Exhibition Duration:
10 June–21 November 2007

Preview Days:
7–9 June 2007

Informal Press Meetings:
Preview Days, 11.30–12.00 hrs,
Dutch Pavilion

For more information,
please visit our website: http://www.citizensandsubjects.nl

Commissioned by: Mondriaan Foundation
Concept, Curator: Maria Hlavajova
Artist in the Dutch Pavilion: Aernout Mik
Critical Reader edited by: Rosi Braidotti, Charles Esche, Maria Hlavajova
‘Extension’ of the Pavilion (The Netherlands, autumn 2007): a collaboration among BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht University, Treaty of Utrecht, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven and Witte de With, Rotterdam
Organized by: BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht

Citizens and Subjects is a three-part project conceived as the Dutch contribution to the 52nd International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. The project reflects on the notion of the nation-state in the present day circumstances of the so-called West and asks how we can negotiate its prospects vis-à-vis the challenges posed by the enduring state of anxiety stemming from various threats, real or imagined. This contemporary condition is co-defined by immigration, an issue of major political and moral consequence, which we seem to have been incapable of resolving. Instead, fear, ‘security’ and violence have increasingly become tools for maintaining the status quo. The project proposes this situation as the paradigm of our contemporaneity and prompts us to think through art about other possible ways that a new kind of political reality could be constructed.

Citizens and Subjects: Aernout Mik
In Citizens and Subjects, Aernout Mik presents a multichannel video installation consisting of three new works – Training Ground, 2007, Convergencies, 2007 and Mock Up, 2007 – embedded in an architectural intervention in the Dutch Pavilion. Training Ground and Mock Up are fictional works (two- and four-channel video installations, respectively), in which Mik starts from the idea of a ‘training’ or ‘exercise’, asking how we prepare teams of first responders (policemen, fire brigades, medical teams, etc.) – and ourselves – to deal with potential future crises or threats to national security and handle issues such as (illegal) immigration. Convergencies (two-channel video installation), by contrast, employs both documentary footage of such trainings and footage from real situations in which the acquired techniques and strategies are applied. Through repetition, re-enactment, mimicry, inertia, building irrational excess by means of staging scenes or editing existing film material
and by over-saturating the work with unexpected play and empowering invention, Mik questions the simplified distinction between citizens (as those with the rights and full privileges of belonging to a state or nation) and subjects (as those under rule or authority) today. On one hand he asks, aren’t we all actually subjected in the same way to this rather disquieting reality? Concurrently, he clarifies the notion of the ‘subject’ as one who is capable of acting in order to overcome the distinction between subjection and possible liberation, metaphorically suggesting that perhaps it is from here that new opportunities might emerge.

Citizens and Subjects: The Netherlands, for example
Instead of a traditional catalogue to accompany the exhibition in the Dutch Pavilion, a critical reader is published, in which ideas and questions that Mik introduces in his project are debated and analysed by a number of scholars and artists based in the Netherlands. The reader takes the state of the Netherlands as an ‘example’ of the contemporary western condition and considers how our society fails to negotiate the challenges posed by economic globalization, human migration and cross-cultural influence. It asks how art and artists can react to these changes and what possibilities they can create to see things differently.

Contributors: BAVO (Gideon Boie & Matthias Pauwels), Sarah Bracke, Esther Captain & Guno Jones, Marlene Dumas, Halleh Ghorashi, Suchan Kinoshita, Sven Lütticken, Aernout Mik, Melvin Moti, Sohelia Najand, Henk Oosterling, Pages (Nasrin Tabatabai & Babak Afrassiabi), Baukje Prins, Willem de Rooij, Iris van der Tuin and Lawrence Weiner.

Edited by Rosi Braidotti, Charles Esche and Maria Hlavajova. Language: English. Number of pages: 336. Published by: BAK, basis voor actuele kunst and JRP|Ringier. Designed by: Kummer and Herrman. ISBN: 978-3-905770-73-5.

Citizens and Subjects: Practices and Debates
The ‘extension’ of the Dutch Pavilion to the Netherlands in autumn 2007 is envisioned as a platform for contributing to the general public debate about a variety of key issues, including changing national identities and the anxieties brought about by such changes. These and other ideas related to the project Citizens and Subjects are debated through art and other disciplines by means of discussion groups, research residencies, teaching modules, lectures and conversations. The programme takes place in Utrecht through a collaboration between BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht University and Treaty of Utrecht, as well as at Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven in conjunction with the project Be[com]ing Dutch and at Witte de With in Rotterdam in connection with the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. These respective projects have grown out of a similar analysis of current cultural, artistic, social and political conditions, and the possible role cultural institutions can play in
their development.

Project Partners
Utrecht University; Treaty of Utrecht; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Witte de With, Rotterdam

Financial Partners
The project Citizens and Subjects has been commissioned and funded by the Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam. The Municipality of Utrecht kindly supported Citizens and Subjects: Practices and Debates. This part of the project has been realized with additional contributions from Utrecht University and Treaty of Utrecht. carlier | gebauer, Berlin has generously provided financial and production assistance. Further financial or in-kind support has been provided by: Forbo Flooring, the Netherlands; Rabo Art Collection, the Netherlands; Independent Television News, London; Associated Press, London.

International press
Beate Barner
t: +49 30 398009609
m: +49 173 6076643
info@citizensandsubjects.nl

Dutch press
Hanna Sohier
t: +31 30 2316125
f: +31 30 2300591
info@citizensandsubjects.nl

For more information go to: http://www.citizensandsubjects.nl

Danish Arts Council

BIENNALIST: Thierry Geoffroy / COLONEL at the Venice Biennale

Biennalist is an art format
Thierry Geoffroy / Colonel does art formats.
Formats that can be transported, repeated, adapted.
Exhibition formats
Geographic formats
Biennalist is a format that questions other formats (like the biennials).
The Venice Biennial will be the springboard for launching Biennalist for the first time.
Once the format is tested and improved the receipt for Biennalist can be exported to any Biennial.

Format is the parameter of form.
It is the format which actualises form.
The format itself is the mere potentiality of form.
Exhibitiongymnastic
The Biennial is a format.
Biennalist is a format.

For the Venice Biennial the format Biennalist will be thematic.
Biennalist will comment on the obsessional topic of Nation-National-Nationalism.
Thierry Geoffroy / Colonel also has expertise in the fields of cultural identity and has produced works on Denmark, Scotland, Germany, and Holland and shown in different international museums, conferences, books, and films.

Biennalist-Venice will take the immediate temperature of the Biennale.
Like the format of Emergency Room, Biennalist will comment immediately what is happening at the Biennial and be the field of an artistic production with an army of exctracteurs and an army of distributeurs

Thierry Geoffroy / Colonel has been seen before at the Venice Biennial when he organised “the curator running lifting competition”. A recent solo show at the Sprengel Museum was about his strategy to surf freely in public space and medias.

Thierry Geoffroy / Colonel has created the format Emergency Room and put it into practice in New York at PS1 / MOMA, at the Nikolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center (with Frank Franzen) and at Galerie Olaf Stüber / Berlin. Thierry Geoffroy / Colonel works with ultrafast exhibitions since 1987.

Thierry Geoffroy / Colonel’s aim is to collectively develop the “awareness muscle”.

Biennalist is faithful to the manifest from 1989.

Thierry Geoffroy / Colonel home site :
http://www.colonel.dk
A daily update of the project will be acccessible from there.

The Danish Arts Council / Venice Biennial site for Biennalist :
http://www.venedigbiennalen.dk/NewFiles/uk_filer/

For the Venice Biennial 2007 Thierry Geoffroy / Colonel has received a grant by the The Committee for International Visual Art of the Danish Arts Council for his project Biennalist

For more information go to: http://www.colonel.dk

TATE ETC.

TATE ETC. Issue 10, featuring Henry II
Visiting and Revisiting Art, etcetera
http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc

To celebrate our tenth issue, TATE ETC. magazine has collaborated with Franz West and The Wrong Gallery – Maurizio Cattalan, Massimiliano Gioni and Ali Subotnick, to produce an exclusive supplement, entitled Henry II. The oversized poster pays homage to some alternative images of Britishness in the Tate Collection, featuring some lesser-displayed works, such as Edward Burra’s ‘Skeleton Party’ and John Quinton Pringle’s ‘The Window’. It also presents Franz West’s antidote to the theme - ‘Greetings from Vienna’.

Issue 10 highlights include…

Salvador Dali and his lifelong obsession with film
Gilda Williams on Andy Warhol and his Mother
Oliver Sacks on Stereography, including an exclusive look at his first ever photograph, taken age 12. Collect your free 3D glasses from Tate shops.
John Miller on Piero Manzoni’s ‘Merda d’artista’
Marina Warner on Maya Deren
Caetano Veloso on Helio Oiticica
Beate Sontgen on Interiors
Jon Wozencroft on Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures
Stephen Daniels on Peter Blake
David Campany on Photography
Roni Horn on Water

Salvador Dalí as film-maker? “The most decisive moment in the production of a film is when you need the force of will to convince your producers that if this film is not made, the world, as we know it, will come to an end.” Roy Disney on his Uncle Walt, Ian Christie, Jonas Mekas and others on Dalí’s lifelong obsession with film.

Marina Warner explores Maya Deren’s oeuvre and examines how she managed “the profound affinity between the material properties of film and inner states of mind”.

The Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica is best known for his coloured boxes, architectural constructions and the wearable caps inspired by his time in Rio’s Mangueira favela. Tate Modern’s exhibition provides an opportunity to explore this mercurial artist during the crucial years when he transformed himself from the precocious Neo-Constructivist acolyte of the 1950s into the revolutionary barrier-smasher of the 1960s. Appreciations from Vincent Katz, Caetano Veloso, Ernesto Neto, Marepe and Catherine Yass.

“Warhol stumbled across ‘The Real America’ in the pantry of a woman who never adopted the American Way of Life.” Gilda Williams on Andy Warhol and his Mother.

To coincide with Tate Britain’s first ever photographic survey of Britain’s social history, TATE ETC. asked David Campany, Martin Parr, Anna Pavord and others to reflect on some memorable photographic images, such as the Goddesses series by Madame Yevonde.

“You realise how water never loses its identity, it is always discretely itself. Water is transparence derived from the presence of everything.” Roni Horn ruminates on how water is central to her work in conversation with Bice Curiger.

TATE ETC. is published three times a year.
Subscribe online at http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/subscribe
Or call +44 (0)20 7887 8959

For more information go to: http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/subscribe

Greek Pavilion

Greek Pavilion
52nd International Art Exhibition
La Biennale di Venezia

"THE END"
June 10 – November 21, 2007 / special cocktail preview: June 8, 17.00 – 19.00 / official inauguration: June 10, 12.00

Artist: Nikos Alexiou,
Commissioner/Curator: Yorgos Tzirtzilakis
Assistant Curator: Nadja Argyropoulou
Organization: Hellenic Ministry of Culture, Directorate of Visual Arts, Department for the promotion of Contemporary Art
Greek Pavilion location: Giardini (next to the new entrance, Santa Elena vaporetto stop)

Nikos Alexiou will present the installation, The End, in the Greek Pavilion at the 52nd International Art Exhibition in Venice. The work is a modular installation inspired by the floor mosaic in the Catholicon of the Iviron Monastery on Mount Athos (10th-11th c. AD).
The Greek pavilion will hold a launch event on 8th June, 5-7pm (by invitation)

Curator Yorgos Tzirtzilakis comments:
"The Greek participation in the 52nd Biennale of Venice focuses on the possibilities of diversity, and the critical re-negotiation of the concepts of identity. Further, through the sensory materiality and multiplicity of artistic practices, and the repetition of the same, revealing and constructing the different a new condition of handicraft will be described and depicted.”

A close relationship has always existed in non-Western and Eastern cultures in terms the affiliation of aesthetic and religious techniques and practices of repetition for the achievement of ecstasy. Nikos Alexiou’s digital and material appropriation of the monastery mosaic sketches a visual path that suggests a broader change in the way that many have tried to describe and employ these practices in recent years. Alexiou’s installation is a four-piece modular work that consists of an interchangeable projection onto a large screen, paper cut-outs, prints and a table with elaborated paper rests; all as separate elements that will carry the traces of this work’s makings and marked with the memory of previous works. It is inspired by the cosmology of the floor mosaic of Iviron monastery at Mt Athos. Through the precision and intricacy of this work, Alexiou attempts to examine the aura of emotions that surround the mysteries of the mosaic.

Nikos Alexiou comments:
"The work for the Biennale, which I’ve called The End, carries everything I’ve worked on all these years, from the ’80s and a little earlier to this day. All references in my work, from rainbows, lights and galaxies to marble, prisms and the psychedelic stuff, are all in it."

About ‘The End’
Alexiou made frequent visits to Mount Athos and has been hosted at Iviron Monastery at various times from 1995 to date, where he got to know the spirituality, the quickening of the soul and the strange interpersonal experiences of coexisting in monastic communal life. During this time, after much “copying” and redesigning of the mosaic he attempted to understand the mysteries it contains as he sought its semantic structure as well as its vortex. One could describe this ‘mobile immobility’ of this floor as a composite ideogram, a symbolically packed system, the kind of condensing of the Whole that we call “data storage” today.

Nikos Alexiou has participated in the 23rd Biennale of Alexandria (2005), in the Outlook and Athens by Art exhibitions (2004 – Athens Olympic Games), Breakthrough! Greece 2004 (Sala Alcala 31, Madrid, Spain), in Free Transit (?) (2003 – Zappeion, Greek Presidency of the EU), DESTE Prize 2003 (DESTE foundation, Greece), et.al.

Sponsors:
The Stavros Niarchos Foundation, The Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation & The J.F. Costopoulos Foundation
With the support of:
Minoan Lines & Boutari

For more information on Nikos Alexiou and the Greek Pavilion in Venice, as well as high resolution visuals, please refer to http://www.nikosalexiou.com

For Media enquiries, please contact:
Katie Taylor at Brunswick Arts on +44 (0) 207 936 1280; ktaylor@brunswickgroup.com
Alexandros J. Stanas at D.ART on +30 210 3821222 ; astanas@d-art.gr
Or coordinator Marina Vranopoulou, vranopoulou@gmail.com

For more information go to: http://www.nikosalexiou.com

SPANISH PAVILION

SPANISH PAVILION / 52nd INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION VENICE BIENNALE.
Paradiso Spezzato / Paraíso fragmentado

Curator: Alberto Ruiz de Samaniego.
Artists: Manuel Vilariño, José Luis Guerín, Los Torreznos (form by Jaime Vallaure y Rafael Lamata) and Rubén Ramos Balsa.

Organization: General Department of Cultural and Scientific Relations of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation.
Sponsors: Conselleria de Cultura e Deporte de la Xunta de Galicia and the State Corporation for Spanish Overseas Cultural Action Abroad.
Info Spanish Pavillion: Arsenal, Ponte del Paradiso and Giardini di Castello.
Dates: June 10th - November 21st, 2007.
Opening hours: 10:00 – 18:00 h.
Preview Spanish Pavilion: June the 8th at 13:00 h.
Press Contact: Ilaria Gianoli. Email: ilariagianoli@tin.it
Web: http://www.mae.es/bienalvenecia07

Paradiso Spezzato / Paraíso fragmentado considers the idea of Paradise as a model of vision. Paradiso Spezzato is the expression used by the poet Ezra Pound to refer to a dimension of saved reality but only attainable as a fragment. Paradise, therefore, as a glowing appearance of poetic light in the midst of an existence that is often damaged, precarious or degraded. And as a synaesthetic proposal, there where it is possible to experience sensations going from one sensorial modality to another.

The exhibition is organized around the work of four creators of artistic disciplines, of various ages and careers who, nevertheless, converge, beyond specific genres, in a similar wish of affirmation of life. In accordance with approaches of an interdisciplinary nature, Paraíso fragmentado/Paradiso Spezzato deals with the photographic image (Manuel Vilariño) and in movement (José Luis Guerín) in their relationship with the poetic vision and temporalness. Corporal gesture, action and voice as proposals of an instinct of play that rebels against heaviness, in a joyful nature (Los Torreznos). The energy of intermittence, the search for routes with no guarantee, the crossings among images that pull all the strings of surprise and the equivalences between creation, growth, life and happiness (Rubén Ramos Balsa).

For more information go to: http://www.mae.es/bienalvenecia07

Framework

Framework: Special Nordic Issue
# 7/June´07: Nationality in Context

Photo:
René Block, the curator of the Nordic Pavilion in the Venice Biennale 2007.
Photo by Lars Ramberg, January 2007.
http://www.framework.fi

Framework: The Finnish Art Review Issue 7/ June´07, built upon a theme of ‘Nationality in Context’, is published as a special Nordic issue, focusing on the art scenes in five Nordic countries. It contains a special section - that is published also as a free copy newsletter - on the Nordic Pavilion and its satellite, the Aalto Pavilion, at the Venice Biennale. The artists in the exhibition of the pavilions, Welfare – Fare Well, are featured: Adel Abidin (Finland), Jacob Dahlgren (Sweden), Toril Goksøyr & Camilla Martens (Norway), Sirous Namazi (Sweden), Lars Ramberg (Norway), and Maaria Wirkkala (Finland). They have been invited by René Block, an internationally acclaimed artistic director of exhibitions and biennials.

By including artists from different national backgrounds, the exhibition emphasizes the fact that geographical maps and foundations of cultural identities are under re-formation today, also in the North. Interesting is also the fact that the six projects are produced by artists who didn’t know each other across the national borders. This emphasises that the Nordic countries are not a homogenous entity where we could speak of certain particularities, similarities or sameness. However, interestingly enough, the non-Nordic curator has been able to pay a close attention to the questions of the Nordic society and culture.

In the course of building up the famous Nordic welfare society the Nordic countries have willingly wanted to give an impression of themselves as caring and helping nations in the global context. However, all Nordic countries have an increasing number of nationalists who are demanding that their ‘own borders’ should be closed and striving to ensure that their part of the world retains its national sovereignty and economic privileges. The growing fear of the “other” divides people into “we” and “them”. Black immigrants cleaning the window outside the Nordic Pavilion are not allowed to get in the other side and participate in the popular recreational game of darts. This is a strong metaphor for confusion when confronting the question: How come these most affluent societies in world history practice policies which increase social polarization and nourish scare, cynicism, powerlessness and racism?

For René Block the titles of the exhibitions he has curated have always played a significant role in their attempt to crystallize his given approach. This time, he says, “Welfare - Fare Well does not stand for a theme or concept, but is a motto. May welfare fare well! Unfortunately, however, ’fare well’ can also be understood as ‘farewell’, as in ‘goodbye’. I’d like to leave some space for individual interpretation.”

Framework: Special Nordic Issue will be launched in Open-Air Campo Event: Future of Welfare on Campo di Santa Margherita, Venice on Saturday 9th of June, 2007 at 8 – 11 pm, organized in collaboration with Framework: The Finnish Art Review, Filosofia e Questioni Pubbliche (FQP, Rome), Fondazione Humanity, Il Saggiatore, and Cultural Association PLUG, Venice. The three hour event will take place under the Patronage of the Municipalities of Venice, Murano and Burano and includes two public panels, bringing together a number of contributors:

Panel in English at 8 – 8:30 pm: René Block, Curator of the Nordic Pavilion 2007, Berlin; Yrjö Haila, Professor of Environmental Policy, University of Tampere, Finland; Agnes Kohlmeyer, Curator and Professor of Contemporary Art History, IUAV University, Venice. Coordinator: Camilla Seibezzi, Plug, Venice.

Panel in Italian at 9 – 9:45 pm: Cesare Damiano, Italian Minister of Welfare, Rome; Sebastiano Maffettone, Director of FQP, LUISS ‘Guido Carli’ University, Rome; Maria Rosa Sossai, Curator and Art Critic, Venice; Ingrid Salvatore, Political Philosopher, University of Salerno; Laura Bazzicalupo, Professor of Political Philosophy, University of Salerno. Coordinator: Luca Formenton, Il Saggiatore.

The arrangements will be assisted by the artist group Cheap Finnish Labour.
YKON’s video work More than a Joke: Who Laughes Last, Laughs Longest! Fake It till You Make It! (M8 - Summit of Micronations, Singapore, 2006) will be screened at 10-11 pm.

Publisher:
FRAME Finnish Fund for Art Exchange
Merimiehenkatu 36 D 527, FI-00150 Helsinki
Phone +358 (0)40 5070809, info@frame-fund.fi
http://www.frame-fund.fi

For more information go to: http://www.frame-fund.fi

German Pavilion

German Pavilion
La Biennale di Venezia 2007

Isa Genzken
OIL

Curator: Nicolaus Schafhausen

Preview 7 - 9 June 2007
Exhibition 10 June - 21 Nov. 2007

http://www.deutscher-pavillon.org

Given the long and changeful history of the Venice Biennale since 1895, the German Pavilion is not an easy site for an exhibition. For Isa Genzken, this formed the horizon of an installation developed especially for Venice, an installation that attends to the architecture, stages it, and comments on it. Like all her works, this new one resists all visual language that could be appropriated by national attributes of any kind, and yet Isa Genzken uses motifs that point toward a West German post-war history typical of her own generation.

The ideals of modernism and their re-coding in popular culture, as expressed especially in North American art and everyday culture, undergo a metamorphosis in Genzken’s contribution to the Biennale di Venezia in which splendor and squalor, euphoria and disillusionment are closely intertwined. The title “Oil” consciously plays with different levels that, while naming a concrete substance – a global and increasingly contested resource – also chose the abstractness of metaphor. “Oil” is an expression of the times in which we live, reducing complexity to a tangible image: taking on various slogans and stylizing these into a dystopian outlook for the future and an expression of freedom.

“… that is what the whole world is about. Whether there’s war or not, that’s what it’s all about. Energy and oil. You’ve simply got to understand this.” – Isa Genzken
(Isa Genzken “Oil”, Engl. version, pg. 157.)

Publication

Isa Genzken "Oil", German Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2007, Nicolaus Schafhausen (ed.)

This official publication for the German contribution at the 52nd Venice Biennale focuses on Isa Genzken’s site-specific work for the pavilion. The authors offer a range of different approaches to her work – a diversity necessary for an understanding of the complexity inherent in the artist’s practice. Texts by Liam Gillick, Juliane Rebentisch, Vanessa Joan Müller and Willem de Rooij, and a conversation between Isa Genzken and Nicolaus Schafhausen.

220 pages with 120 full-page and double-page color illustrations Format 32 x 24 cm (vertical), hardbound with dust jacket.

Language versions: German/Dutch, English/Italian, English/Arabic, English/Chinese, English/Spanish On sale at the German Pavilion and Electa bookshop, Venice Biennale, and distributed internationally.

Published by DuMont Kunst und Literatur Verlag.

The core team of the German Pavilion

Nicolaus Schafhausen, Witte de With, Rotterdam - commissioner/curator
Sophie von Olfers, Witte de With, Rotterdam - assistant curator
Roger Bundschuh, Bundschuh Architekten, Berlin - architecture
Markus Weisbeck, Surface Gesellschaft für Gestaltung, Frankfurt - graphic design
Sven Bergmann, Bonn - press and PR
Paul van Gennip, Witte de With, Rotterdam - production
Natasa Radovic, Venice; Julia Moritz, Venice; Laura Preston, Rotterdam - assistance

German Pavilion
Venice Biennale 2007
c/o Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art
Witte de Withstraat 50
3012 BR Rotterdam
The Netherlands
Tel. 0031 (0)10 4110 144
Email: info@deutscher-pavillon.org
http://www.deutscher-pavillon.org

For further information please contact Sophie von Olfers:
vonolfers@deutscher-pavillon.org, tel. 0031 (0)10 4110 144

For press information please contact Sven Bergmann:
bergmann@deutscher-pavillon.org, tel. 0049 (0)179 5341 563

The German Pavilion at the 52nd International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia 2007 is commissioned and sponsored by the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany, and co-organised by the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (ifa, Stuttgart).

The main sponsor of the German Pavilion is Deutsche Bank. http://www.artsummer.com

Media partners are DW-TV Deutsche Welle and Vogue Germany. The pavilion is technically realised by the production team of Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam.

For more information go to: http://www.deutscher-pavillon.org

Grackle

Grackle is an at-a-glance database of modern and contemporary art exhibitions available for tour.

http://www.grackleworld.com

We are pleased to announce the launch of http://www.grackleworld.com . Grackle is an online database of exhibitions available for tour. Curators may search the database for exhibitions by available floorspace, dates of availability, price, and most recent posts. Searching the database is free.

To add an exhibition to the database, curators may purchase an annual membership that allows for multiple posts, or pay for a single post. Educational and non-profit institutions may receive discounts. Grackle provides a password-accessed template that facilitates quick uploading of images and relevant information about exhibitions. Curators can access their posts at any time to edit or add material. Additionally, they may e-mail posts as links to colleagues.

Every month the Grackle team selects an artist to feature independent of the exhibitions on the database. A work by the featured artist appears on Grackle’s homepage.

For more information about Grackle, please visit www.grackleworld.com or contact Regine Basha or Christopher K. Ho at info@grackleworld.com.

Special thanks to the inaugural group of institutions and curators with posts on http://www.grackleworld.com:

INSTITUTIONS
Arizona State University Art Museum
Art Center Basel
Arthouse at the Jones Center
artwurl.org
6a Biennial do Mercorsul, Porto Allegre
Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin
Cooley Gallery, Reed College
Japan Society, New York
List Gallery, Swarthmore College
Luckman Gallery, California State University, Los Angeles
Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University
Richard E. Peeler Art Center, DePauw University
San Jose Museum of Art
Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art
Schroeder Romero Gallery
Stadtische Kunsthalle Munich
Triangle Project Space
Tweed Museum of Art
UB Art Gallery, University of Buffalo
Weatherspoon Art Museum

CURATORS
Uli Aigner
Beverly Adams and Gabriel Perez-Barreiro
Kelly Baum
Gerry Beegan
Annette DiMeo Carlozzi
Bill Carroll and Andrea Packard
Cassandra Coblentz
Susanna Cole & Erin Donnelly
Elizabeth Dunbar
Xandra Eden
Sandra Q. Firmin
Miki Garcia
Dr. Suzanne Greub
Dr. Thierry Greub
Kaytie Johnson
Julie Joyce
Marilu Knode
Carlos Motta
JoAnne Northrup
Sara Jo Romero
José Ruiz
Lisa Schroeder
Eric C. Shiner
Stephanie Snyder
John Spiak
Ken Bloom and Peter Spooner
Pelin Uran
Ursula Dávila-Villa

For more information go to: http://www.grackleworld.com