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Kunstverein in Hamburg

Bojan Sarcevic
Only After Dark, Installation view at Kunstverein in Hamburg,2008

BOJAN SARCEVIC
Only After Dark
through September 21, 2008

AUFTAKT
in cooperation with Kampnagel

http://www.kunstverein.de

Bojan Sarcevic, Only After Dark

Bojan Sarcevic first gained international recognition at the second Manifesta 1998 in Luxemburg when he sealed windows, doors, and other openings with paper and pieces of fabric in a former exhibition space of a natural history museum. This interest in space and its social, cultural, and psychological connotations, already apparent here, is still today of fundamental importance for Sarcevic, who was born in Belgrade in 1974. His media range from interventions in found situations, installations, and autonomous sculpture to videos and discursive activities. Thus, at the Berlin Biennial 2004, he presented workers’ favorite clothes. Speculation about their former wearers’ preferences, tastes, and social position, and the peculiar discrepancy between their museal presentation and their signs of wear, emerged in their reception. The situation was similar with his contribution to the exhibition “Formalism—Modern Art, today” at the Kunstverein in Hamburg, for which Sarcevic laid tw
o massive granite working surfaces on black metal frames. Here, too, grooves, scratches, and notches produced by stonemasons in the course of their work contrasted with the presentation of the objects. These “tables” were combined with a work consisting of thin strips of paper draped about the room and measuring out the spatial volume like the lines of a drawing.

Social relevance and autonomy vie with each other in Bojan Sarcevic’s art. The use his works make of the formal vocabularies of the 1910s–1930s can also be viewed against this background. For it was in precisely this period that the decisive 20th-century cleft crystallized out between the idea of a purpose-free art appealing primarily to aesthetic criteria, and a political, agitationist stance that called on art to change society. The work cycle Only After Dark presented at the Kunstverein in Hamburg can be seen in a similar light. In these five 16 mm films presented for the first time together here in Germany, the camera explores the surfaces of abstract objects—small sculptures in wood, metal, and other materials. Music composed specially for the films enhances their mysterious, charged atmosphere that also comes out in the pavilions—reminiscent of constructivist architecture—in which they are presented. Staged and filmed in this way, Sarcevic’s objects shift betwee
n landscape, architecture, design, and stage set. The artist deliberately plays off the social determinedness of these realms against the formal elegance of their staging.

Curated by Yilmaz Dziewior

Auftakt (in cooperation with Kampnagel)

In fall 2008, the Kunstverein in Hamburg and Kampnagel are staging a big interdisciplinary project entitled “Wir nennen es Hamburg (We Call it Hamburg)” to which visual artists, choreographers, directors, and musicians from Hamburg will be invited. Various preliminary events will constitute a lead-up in the course of the summer. There will be a musical evening with Frau Kraushaar and Christian Naujoks, and Bildwechsel will be presenting videos by Hamburg women artists. “Showings”—short dance performances—will give insight into some of the choreographical works being performed in the context of the project. All Auftakt events will take place in an environment specially designed as an independent work and functional setting by the Jochen Schmith artist collective.

Curated by Kunstverein in Hamburg and Kampnagel

Kunstverein in Hamburg
Klosterwall 23
20095 Hamburg
T. 0049-(0)40-33 84 44
F.0049-(0)40-32 21 59

Tue-Sun 11-18
Thu 11-21

For further information or image material please contact
Kunstverein in Hamburg, Meike Behm, T. 0049 – (0)40 – 32 21 57, behm@kunstverein.de

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Digital Contemporary art, by Dimitrios Loumiotis Gllery kosmima
Waeringer str. Volksoper Vienna, Schmuck-Atelier Vienna art Jewellery.http://www.artmajeur.com/loumiotis/

BAK, basis voor actuele kunst

Announces new Curator position
until 8 September 2008

Utrecht, NL

http://www.bak-utrecht.n

BAK, basis voor actuele kunst is currently seeking a committed, visionary curator to fill a newly created position on its team and contribute to its activities. BAK, located in Utrecht, the Netherlands, is an internationally recognized space dedicated to thinking from, about, and through art, and is invested in the exploration and empowerment of two vital relationships: the link between art and the public sphere, and the alliance between artistic practice and theory.

BAK initiates research on diverse subjects of urgency that are key to the pursuit of these crucial relationships in art, and together with artists and other cultural practitioners realizes projects such as exhibitions, lectures, education, publications, and significant productions of new work. BAK places equal emphasis on these diverse activities. Exemplified by practices of participation, discursivity, production, flexibility, fluidity, and criticality, BAK’s approach constitutes a way of thinking and acting, a process of development, and a continuous activation of the possibility of art. BAK understands art in the expanded sense as a uniquely open field of possibilities inside society in which various discourses (aesthetic, cultural, political, social, economic, and others) intersect and exchange.

The ideal curator would feel a strong affinity with BAK’s philosophy and working methods and be ready to contribute her/his energy, intellectual capacities, creativity, vision, and ethical commitment to the diverse tasks at hand. This individual’s interests should be broad, but grounded in a vision of contemporary art as practice in active dialogue with the contemporary world and its concerns. She/he would demonstrate a strong inclination towards the activities of exhibition making and the conception and development of theory and discourse-oriented programs. The curator will have the intellectual independence and confidence to collaborate closely with the artistic director and orient her/himself within a small team and the conceptual framework of BAK, bringing new ideas and possibilities for collaboration to the fore. As continuity is an underlying principle of all BAK’s activities, the curator would readily express a serious, long-term commitment to the position.

Interested individuals are encouraged to contact BAK (info@bak-utrecht.nl) for application materials. Completed applications are accepted from the date of this announcement until 8 September 2008. We regret that we are unable to accommodate phone inquiries.

Frac Lorraine

Deimantas Narkevicius, The Head, 2007. 35 mm Film, 12′a
Copyright: gb agency, Paris / Jan Mot, Bruxelles

YOU ARE MY MIRROR 2 :
THE BRIGHT TOMORROWS
THAT NEVER CAME

Deimantas Narkevicius,
Gintaras Didziapetris
Exhibition Bis: Matthew Buckingham, Nicolas Pinier
July 4 - October 19 2008

Opening: Thursday 3rd July - 7pm

http://www.fraclorraine.org

The splendor and misery of monuments…erected in public spaces in order to “commemorate” an event collectively… Or dismantled, taken down after the collapse of the ideologies they served, and once the propaganda they embodied had lost its audience. Signs of pies in the sky, utopias which have not kept their promises, monuments of the Soviet era today merely exude an air of obsolescence, silence or a sort of “aphasia” (1). The emptiness of public spaces devoid of these witnesses to totalitarian power is not enough, however, to erase memory and history.

The exhibition The bright tomorrows that never came references Lithuania’s recent social and political history to broach the question of heritage, transmission, memory, commemoration, utopia-and, evidently between the lines, that of monumentality and anti-monumentality-through the encounter and dialogue between two artists representing different generations: Deimantas Narkevicius and Gintaras Didziapetris. Each questions in his own fashion the articulation between the past and the present, between personal and collective history, as well as the fictional potential of historical images and testimonies. Their work and reflection have a particular resonance in the Lorraine region, its landscape scarred by history and punctuated by monuments marking wars, human loss and periods of annexation.

1- Jean-Pierre Rehm, “Suspended Vocation”, in A Prior Magazine no. 14, May 2007, p. 162.

This exhibition is part of the You are my mirror events set up in Grand Est and Vilnius and presented as part of the European Cultural Season in France (July 1st - December 31, 2008), organized by the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs and the Ministry of Culture and Communication, with the support of the General Secretary of the French Presidency of the European Union, and organized by Culturesfrance.

49 NORD 6 EST - Frac Lorraine
1bis rue des Trinitaires, Metz
Hours: Wednesday through Sunday 12pm - 7pm.
free admission.

Partnership: With the kind thanks to Conseil Général de la Moselle ; Gallery gb agency; Frac Bourgogne.