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Gwangju Biennale

POSITION PAPERS Curators

The 7th Gwangju Biennale
September 5, 2008 - November 9, 2008

http://www.gb.or.kr

The 7th Gwangju Biennale, artistic director Okwui Enwezor and co-curators, Hyunjin Kim and Ranjit Hoskote, are pleased to announce the appointment of five key contributors to the Biennale. Patrick D. Flores, Jang Un Kim, Abdellah Karroum, Sung-Hyen Park, and Claire Tancons have been selected for their accomplishments as writers, intellectuals, and specifically curators to create a series of interventions called POSITION PAPERS for the upcoming Gwangju Biennale.

As one of the three main platforms for the Biennale, POSITION PAPERS will feature small group exhibitions of no more than five artists each, where each curator is encouraged to present and install work by artists of their choosing. The POSITION PAPERS are an open format with no other restriction than the one mentioned above and will correlate to the other platforms of the 7th Gwangju Biennale, namely ON THE ROAD and INSERTIONS, as they will be asked to intervene into the fabric of the biennale as well as the city of Gwangju. Each of the projects developed as part of POSITION PAPERS is to be seen as a work in progress, a provisional essay towards a larger horizon, and may consist of previously existing work, or may include newly-commissioned artworks, and will open, along with the rest of Annual Report: A Year in Exhibitions, on September 5, 2008 and run until November 9, 2008.

The five POSITION PAPERS curators were selected based on their innovation, scholarship, and multidisciplinary research at a local level, and their ability to organize and maintain successful programs and content. The foundation for the 7th Gwangju Biennale is extremely honored to be able to work on the realization of these POSITION PAPERS, and will release specific details about each intervention in the upcoming months.

Curator Biographies

Patrick D. Flores (born 1969) is Professor of art history, theory, and criticism at the University of the Philippines at Diliman, and is a curator at the National Art Gallery of the Philippine National Museum in Manila. A recognized scholar in the fields of Philippine and Asian art, Flores has organized several national and international platforms, including “Luz: Traces of Depiction” at the National Museum of the Philippines (2006), and “Under Construction: New Dimensions of Asian Art” at the Japan Foundation Asia Center (2000-2003). Flores is the author of numerous articles and several books concerning Philippine art.

Abdellah Karroum (born 1970) works as an independent art researcher, publisher and curator. He is the founder and artistic director of several art projects, including ‘L’appartement 22’, an experimental space for encounters, exhibitions and artists’ residencies founded in 2002 in Rabat, Morocco; the art expeditions project ‘Le Bout Du Monde’; and a series of art publications, ‘éditions hors’champs.’ Karroum is currently doing research for a thesis at EHESS (Paris) on contemporary art in the Maghreb and its international connections. Karroum has curated numerous exhibitions for Le CAPC Musée d’art contemporain de Bordeaux, and was one of the curators for the 2006 DAK’ART Biennial for African Contemporary Art.

Jang Un Kim (born 1975) is a curator and art critic based in Seoul, South Korea. A member of several contemporary art collectives in Seoul (including the Pidgin Collective and Friendly Enemies), Kim has engaged issues of cultural policy, the Korean postcolonial situation, and the use of alternative space by working as an educator, an editor of various publications, and through organizing numerous events in nontraditional venues. Kim has worked recently as curator of the Anyang Public Art Project Foundation and as a lecturer at the Korean National University of Arts in Seoul.

Sung-Hyen Park graduated in 1997 from the Graduate School of Fine Arts at the College of Fine Arts at Hongik University and has worked since 1995 as the curator of the Gwangju Lotte Gallery. Park has recently implemented a number of public art projects and exhibitions, including “Nine roads to go up to the backyard under the sky” (2006), “Something wonderful is happening in the Gwangjucheon (creek)” (2003), the Field Art Project (2002). He has also worked since 2005 to establish an ongoing environmental arts festival in Gwangju, an event that has led to exhibitions in the Okgwa Art Museum and the Cultural Space Seodong.

Claire Tancons lives and works in New Orleans where she is associate curator at the Contemporary Arts Center and for Prospect.1 New Orleans. A scholar on Caribbean carnivals engaged with issues of Creolization, Tancons is currently co-organizing a program about the common cultural legacy in street carnivals and brass band music in Cape Town and New Orleans as well as planning an exhibition on contemporary carnival arts. She has published various texts and has delivered lectures on the topic in the US, Trinidad, South Africa and Suriname.

Lismore Castle Arts

A LIFE OF THEIR OWN

An Exhibition of Contemporary Sculpture

CURATED BY RICHARD CORK

Kate Atkin, Matt Calderwood, Roger Hiorns, Rosalind Nashashibi & Lucy Skaer, Eva Rothschild, Conrad Shawcross, Daniel Silver and Kate Terry.

26TH APRIL – 30TH SEPTEMBER 2008

LISMORE, CO.WATERFORD, IRELAND

http://www.lismorecastlearts.ie

A LIFE OF THEIR OWN brings together nine young artists, most of them exhibiting in Ireland for the first time. Renowned art critic and historian, Richard Cork has curated a show that will transform the gallery at Lismore Castle with installations, screenings and sculpture that offer a challenge to what art in general, and sculpture in particular, might be. Although these artists belong to the same generation, they are not impelled by the urge to band together and announce the birth of a unified new group. They ambush us with alternative proposals and continually catch the viewer off balance.

Lismore Castle Arts will host a series of public talks and events offering visitors a unique opportunity to meet and interact with artists, curators and specialists. The first of these, a keynote address by curator Richard Cork, will take place on Saturday April 26th.

SCHEDULE OF TALKS:
April 26h: Richard Cork: KEYNOTE ADDRESS: A LIFE OF THEIR OWN, LISMORE CASTLE ARTS 2008
June 8th: Dr Peter Harbison (Professor of Archaeology, Royal Hibernian Academy) MEDIAEVAL SCULPTURE
July 6t : Raymond Ryan (Curator, Heinz Architectural Center, Carnegie Museum) ART & SPACES NOW
August 10th: Richard Cork, Kate Atkin, Roger Hiorns PANEL DISCUSSION

Lismore Castle Arts was founded in 2005 and is committed to presenting ambitious and challenging work by world renowned artists. The gallery is housed in the once-derelict west wing of Lismore Castle and currently hosts one major exhibition each year Previous exhibitions have included a solo show from Richard Long and a unique collaboration with the Rubell Family from Miami. Artists who have exhibited include Darren Almond, Matthew Barney, Hernan Bas, Richard Billingham, Gerard Byrne, Dorothy Cross, , Michael Craig-Martin, Anri Sala, Gregor Schneider and Artur Zmijewski. A permanent collection of contemporary sculpture is also on display in the Castle gardens, including works by Eilís O’Connell, Antony Gormley, David Nash, and most recently Franz West.

Open every day 11am – 4.45 pm : April 26th – September 30th
Lismore Castle Arts, Lismore Co. Waterford, Ireland
T. +353 (0) 58 54061. F. +353 (0) 58 4896
http://www.lismorecastlearts.ie
director@lismorecastlearts.ie

MAMbo-Museo d’Arte
Moderna di Bologna

Mandarin Ducks, 2005
set photographs
Courtesy Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Köln
Copyright: Willem de Rooij

Jeroen de Rijke / Willem de Rooij
April 20 – June 8, 2008
curated by Gianfranco Maraniello and Andrea Viliani

MAMbo-Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna
Via Don Minzoni 14
40121 Bologna
Italia
info@mambo-bologna.org
http://www.mambo-bologna.org

Since the start of their collaboration in 1994 Jeroen de Rijke (1970 – 2006) and Willem de Rooij (b. 1969) have produced a select corpus of 35mm and 16mm films, photographs, objects, installations and texts. Their collaborative work analyses the conventions of presentation and representation, and explores the areas of tension between sociopolitical and autonomous image production.

This exhibition is conceived as the counterpart to a twin exhibition in K21, Düsseldorf, which took place from December 2007 to April 2008. Each of these two shows highlights a different selection of de Rijke / de Rooij’s works from the last ten years, contextualized by documentation and source material.

De Rijke / de Rooij’s exhibitions were always carefully staged and could be seen as autonomous installations. Through partial reconstruction within both exhibitions of previous presentations – such as Mandarin Ducks, Dutch Pavilion, 51st Venice Biennale and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Magazin4, Bregenz – multiple conceptual and visual echoes make for a deeper understanding of de Rijke / de Rooij’s artistic program.

The exhibition at K21 centered on two films – Mandarin Ducks (2005) and The Point of Departure (2002) – the slide projection Orange (2004), the photographic works Light Studies I-VII as well as a partial reactivation of the exhibition Mandarin Ducks and a new installation inspired on Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Il fiore delle mille e una notte. The exhibition at MAMbo centers on a hugely different selection of works: the film Mandarin Ducks – the only piece shared by the two exhibitions – the 16mm film I’m Coming Home in Forty Days (1997), the 35mm film Bantar Gebang (2000) as well as a number of photographic pieces depicting different Oriental carpets or monochrome surfaces and the installation Bouquet IV (2005). Mandarin Ducks is a highly stylized conversation piece, in which ten characters negotiate physical and emotional space within a modernist domestic interior. Bantar Gebang juxtaposes the visual splendor of a tropical sunset over an Indonesian slum with the daily
reality of that same location. I’m Coming Home in Forty Days, a circumnavigation of an iceberg in Greenland, oscillates between abstraction and realistic depiction of the landscape. Bouquet IV reflects on the photographic translation from color into black and white. Excluding extremes, its color spectrum could be also read as a metaphor for contemporary cultural mainstream.

In the show at MAMbo a main part of the exhibition Together (Magazin4, Bregenz, 2005) is also reconstructed, and two creations of Dutch fashion designer Fong-Leng (b. 1938) are shown together for the first time. Originating from two different public collections in the Netherlands, this duo of extravagant golden dresses – Luipaard and its modern replica, Luipaard II - tells a self-reflexive tale about the liaison between society life and culture, exoticism and economy in 1970s Amsterdam. Both dresses also relate to two installations that Willem de Rooij produced for Galerie Chantal Crousel in Paris (2006) and Galerie Daniel Buchholz in Cologne (2007).

Intersecting with the show at K21, the peculiar ensemble of de Rijke / de Rooij’s works presented at MAMbo creates unexpected encounters that oscillate between expository and documentary framework and sets up a complex doppelganger entity, which ultimately avoids the features and the very idea of a
survey show.

Jeroen de Rijke / Willem de Rooij is a joint project by K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen and MAMbo-Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna. The two independent yet connected exhibitions present a comprehensive overview of the work of Jeroen de Rijke and Willem de Rooij, which is accompanied by a new exhibition catalogue (published by Snoeck, Cologne) with texts by Sabeth Buchmann, Willem de Rooij, Ann Goldstein and Andrea Viliani.