Artipedia - Arts News

Zacheta National Gallery of Art

Zofia Rydet
Private Mythologies, 1980s
private collection

SHE-DOCUMENTALISTS
POLISH WOMEN PHOTOGRAPHERS OF THE 20th CENTURY
18th March - 18th May 2008

Zacheta National Gallery of Art
Pl. Malachowskiego 3
00-916 Warsaw, Poland
phone (+48 22) 827 58 54
rzecznik@zacheta.art.pl
Tues - Sun 12 noon - 8 p.m.

http://www.zacheta.art.pl

The exhibition She-Documentalists – Polish Women Photographers of the 20th Century emerged with the aim of presenting two fields of photography that have up until now been marginalized by the history of Polish photography: the work of documentary photographers and photography done by women.

Polish documentary photography assumed many different forms and varieties, but has never been systematised. We also know little about women photographers. Even experts in the history of Polish photography can usually mention just a couple of names, whereas history knows dozens of them. The exhibition will present the work of fifty Polish women documentary photographers, but we are aware that the selection represents only a fragment of the phenomenon. Even though most of the featured authors enjoyed recognition, or even fame, in their lifetime, they have by now fallen into oblivion.

The contemporary documentary tendencies in art photography create an incentive to analyse the phenomenon in Polish photography as well. This exhibition constitutes one of the possible historical constructions. In chronological terms, it encompasses the period from the 1870s (to which period date the earliest known non-studio documentary photographs) right up to contemporary documentary-artistic projects that have been so often present in recent years in galleries and museums.

The exhibition’s thematic scope is very broad, but two most significant themes are topographical documentary photography and social report photography. Report photography was always seen as a strongly masculine field, even though it was one to which contributed many outstanding Polish women photographic reporters, such as Zofia Chometowska, Julia Pirotte, Irena Jarosinska, Anna Chojnacka, Jadwiga Rubis and Dorota Bilska whose works will be on show at this exhibition. Among those who are still active today are Joanna Helander, Anna Beata Bohdziewicz, Anna Brzezinska and Irena Jurkiewicz, while Maria Zbaska stands out amongst the younger generation. The exhibition also covers other themes which can be included within the frame of the concept of documentary photography, such as ethnographic and travel photography, amateur photography produced by aristocratic women, patriotic photography, propaganda photography, war photography or report photography as a form of
artistic photography.

Despite its cross-sectional nature, the exhibition is based on radical choices that have made it possible to construct a logical narrative on the subject of documentary photography. Several projects from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries show the early ties between photography and the illustrated press as well as the medium’s early, purely documentational, functions. The interwar-period projects reflect photography’s ancillary function towards nationalistic ideas, which the exhibition confronts with the rhetoric of communist photography of the early post-war years. The exhibition has been divided into several thematic sections, such as humanistic reportage, which in Poland was inspired chiefly by Steichen’s Family of Man exhibit; photography as witness of history, showing historical turning-point events; and the classic principle of documentary photography – the law of the series (where besides contemporary projects by the Zorka Project duo or Julia Staniszewska
we present earlier ones, which for the young-generation documentalists could actually represent a point of reference: Janina Mierzecka’s Working Hand, Elzbieta Tejchman’s Zamieniecka Street, or Zofia Rydet’s
Sociological Record).

Besides original prints and contemporary ones made from original negatives, the exhibition presents picture albums, books and illustrated magazines, in which works by women photographers
were featured.

The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated bilingual Polish-English catalogue, co-published by the BOSZ publishing company, containing over 300 photographs, academic texts on documentary photography, and detailed biographical notes on all of the featured authors.

curator Karolina Lewandowska

For images and further information please contact Olga Gawerska: rzecznik@zacheta.art.pl

main sponsor of the exhibition Efect
sponsors of the Zacheta gallery: Netia, Klima San
sponsors of the opening ceremony A.Blikle, Freixenet
official carrier PLL LOT
media patronage: Gazeta Wyborcza, Polityka, TVP, TOK FM, The Warsaw Voice, Onet.pl, empik

Mudam Luxembourg

CALL + RESPONSE
25 - 28 APRIL 2008

A SERIES OF EVENTS
HOSTED BY ARTIST
CANDICE BREITZ

http://www.mudam.lu/call+response

Mudam Luxembourg is proud to present Call + Response, a series of events hosted by artist Candice Breitz. Creative innovation has always relied, to some extent, on the logic of call-and-response, a phrase that Breitz borrows from musicologists, who use it to describe the interactive quality that is key to musical experience in various oral cultures. Mudam warmly invites you to share your ideas with a group of artists and thinkers as they explore the logic of call-and-response and reflect on strategies of artistic appropriation and creative recycling during a three-day line-up of performances, panels and discussions. With invited guests Cory Arcangel, Martin Arnold, Pierre Bismuth, Claude Closky, Diedrich Diedrichsen, Iain Forsyth + Jane Pollard, Surasi Kusolwong, Matthieu Laurette, Lawrence Lessig, Gabriel Lester, Bjørn Melhus, Momus, Jonathan Monk, Kaz Oshiro, Guillaume Paris, Paul Pfeiffer and James Webb.

Friday, 25 April 2008 Evening
OPENING EVENTS
Forsyth + Pollard
London-based artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard met and began working collaboratively in 1993. An interdisciplinary approach to art, music, mediation and ‘liveness’ has led to their continued engagement with the soundtrack underpinning contemporary life. Their universal yet highly personal strategies play out ideas of memory, performance and the mediated image in a challenging but highly accessible body of work.

Saturday, 26 April 2008 10am-6pm
Mondo Youtube
This day-long session brings together several artists who have explored the participatory potential of mainstream media such as advertising, the Internet, reality television, video games, MySpace and YouTube. Given the increasingly profit-driven nature of most of these formats, is it possible for a challenging culture of call-and-response to exist within these nascent public spheres, or inevitable that all criticism and innovative thought introduced into these new formats will immediately be instrumentalized towards commercial ends? Invited artists will supplement discussions of their own work with examples of mainstream media that have interested them, influenced them, or into which they have actively intervened.
with:
Cory Arcangel, New York
Matthieu Laurette, Paris
Bjørn Melhus, Berlin
Guillaume Paris, Paris
Gabriel Lester, Amsterdam/Brussels

Sunday, 27 April 2008 10am-6pm
After Images
This day-long session brings together several artists who have engaged in explicit call-and-response relationships with other artists or works of art, addressing the crucial exchange and dialogue that motivates artistic practice. Each artist will talk about their own work in relation to those artists or works of art that they respond to or dialogue with in their work.
with:
Surasi Kusolwong, Bangkok
Jonathan Monk, Berlin
Claude Closky, Paris
Kaz Oshiro, Los Angeles
James Webb, Cape Town
Keynote Speaker :
Lawrence Lessig, San Francisco

Monday, 28 April 2008 9am-8pm
Art Goes To The Movies
Martin Arnold has written that, “The cinema of Hollywood is a cinema of exclusion, reduction and denial, a cinema of repression. There is always something behind that which is being represented, which was not represented. And it is exactly that that is most interesting to consider.” This premise can be seen to inform the work of many contemporary artists who work in video today. This day-long session brings together several artists who have responded to and cannibalized mainstream cinema in their work, addressing the complex call-and-response relationship that exists between commercial cinema and contemporary art. Each artist will have the opportunity to talk about their use of found footage and their relationship to the cinematic images that they recycle in their work.
with:
Paul Pfeiffer, New York
Pierre Bismuth, Brussels
Martin Arnold, Vienna
Candice Breitz, Berlin
Keynote Speaker :
Diedrich Diederichsen, Berlin

Evening
Momus Live
“Ultraconformist, voyager, timelord, tennis and ping pong champion, tender pervert, poison boyfriend, hippopotamus, philosopher, folk singer, star forever.” Nick Currie, more popularly known under the artist name Momus (after the Greek god of mockery), is a songwriter, blogger and a journalist for Wired. Most of his songs are self-referential or postmodern.

- - -
Please register online before 10th April 2008!
Booking is essential due to limited seating.
Mudam can provide assistance with accommodation, food, local transport and other details for students.
Call+Response will take place in the Mudam auditorium and will be open only to registered participants.
All talks will be held in English.
Program subject to modification

Mudam Luxembourg
3 Park Dräi Eechelen
L-1499 Luxembourg
Tel. +352 45 37 85-1
Registration : http://www.mudam.lu/call+response
Information : callandresponse@mudam.lu
Press contact: presse@mudam.lu
http://www.mudam.lu

ART COLOGNE
16th to 20th April 2008

Hidden treasures and discoveries

http://www.artcologne.de

After a thorough upgrading of exhibitor quality, a select group of 140 galleries will be showcasing works in categories ranging from modernism to contemporary art from 16th to 20th April at ART COLOGNE 2008. The special Open Space segment will offer exhibition space to the projects of about 50 artists. Additional highlights of ART COLOGNE 2008 will include previously unknown and newly discovered works on the art market through the special programmes Hidden Treasures, New Contemporaries and New Talents.

ART COLOGNE – Hidden Treasures
In 2008, ART COLOGNE will once again generate momentum and offer practical assistance to collectors who would like to buy promising works of art. Through its annual special show “Hidden Treasures”, ART COLOGNE reminds visitors of artists who have had a major influence on contemporary art and the younger generation of artists, but whose works are hardly to be seen in the current art market or are being sold at prices below their real value. The “Hidden Treasures” of ART COLOGNE 2008 are the works of Norbert Kricke (Galerie Strelow, Düsseldorf/ Galerie Wahlandt, Stuttgart), Ulrike Rosenbach (Galerie March, Stuttgart), Fritz Winter (Galerie Utermann, Dortmund) and Karl Bohrmann (manus presse, Stuttgart).

ART COLOGNE – New Talents
One of the oldest special programmes for sponsoring young artists and innovative new works of art is New Talents. For this year’s ART COLOGNE, a six-member jury chose works by 17 young artists from nine different countries. It was by no means easy for the jurors to make their final selections. Many of the artists whose creations will be on display work in several genres — combining, for instance, sculpture and video art — and use modern techniques. One noticeable trait of this group of artists is their focus on the lives and environments of people on the margins of society and on their own existence as artists. An independent jury will honour the “best of the best” of these new talents with the ART COLOGNE Young Artist Prize. Besides a solo exhibition at the Cologne artothek, the recipient of the prize will also have his or her works published in a catalogue with a total value of approx. 10,000 Euro. The presentation of the ART COLOGNE Prize will take place at 3 p.m. on 1
8th April 2008. The New Talents of 2008 are: Stefaan Dheedene (Deweer Art Gallery, Otegem, Belgium), Martin Dörbaum (Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne), Nezaket Ekici (DNA-Galerie, Berlin), Lorenz Estermann (Lukas Feichtner Galerie, Vienna, Austria), FFM filderbahnfreundemöhringen (Galerie Michael Sturm, Stuttgart), Johanna Freise (Galerie Thoman, Innsbruck, Austria), Max Frey (Krobath Wimmer, Vienna, Austria), Grit Hachmeister (Fiebach & Minninger, Cologne), Secundino Hernández (Galería Heinrich Erhardt, Madrid), Joseph Hart (Galerie Vidal-Saint Phalle, Paris), Anja Jensen (Galerie f 5,6, Munich), Agnieszka Kalinowska (Galerie Nächst St. Stephan, Vienna, Austria), Valerie Krause (Galerie Heinz Holtmann, Cologne), Sebastian Rug (Galerie Hübner, Frankfurt), Gregor Russ (Ruzicska /// Weiss, Düsseldorf), Mikhael Subotzky (Studio La Cittá, Verona, Italy) and Yuzheng Cheng (Thomas Levy Galerie, Hamburg).

ART COLOGNE – New Contemporaries
The New Contemporaries programme is aimed at new galleries that have not yet fully established themselves in the art scene but have great potential. The jury invited 19 such galleries to exhibit at ART COLOGNE 2008 in sponsored booths with the generous support of the cultural foundation SK Stiftung Kultur of Sparkasse KölnBonn. The following galleries are the New Contemporaries for 2008: Artfinder, Bracke, Charkasi, Coma, Ferdinand-Ude, Garnatz, Hoelzner, Lange & Pult, Lethert, Lorenz, M29, Murata & Friends, Oechsner, Pfab, Program. Reimann Le Bègue, Sara Tecchia, Scharmann and Winter.

ART COLOGNE – Open Space
“Open Space” is the public exhibition area at ART COLOGNE. Instead of the traditional presentation of artworks in booths representing individual galleries, this ambitious project showcases a variety of artistic exhibits and media from selected galleries in an open, spacious overall setting. It invites visitors to attend an unconventional and contemporary presentation where they can stroll, chat and (of course) buy works that strike their fancy. This special show will be held directly next to the stands of the leading international galleries for contemporary art. The aim of the project is to present art in an unconventional, discursive setting that meets the changing needs of a well-informed, networked international public and offers them space to develop. It’s an art market that provides a platform for communication as well as commerce and competition.

ART COLOGNE
Date: 16th to 20th April 2008
Opening times: 12 noon to 8 p.m. daily
Vernissage: 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., 15th April 2008
Website: http://www.artcologne.de
Open Space: http://www.openspace-cologne.com