ARTMargins

Contemporary art across the evolving global peripheries

Monthly Archive: December 2006

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

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 by Yulia Tikhonova (New York) ·

A Conversation with Yevgeniy Fiks

In a new series of interviews with contemporary artists from Russia (“Painterly Practice and the Post-Socialist Condition”), conceived and compiled by Yulia Tikhonova, ARTMargins explores art production in the post-Soviet age, with an emphasis on painting. While the way in which Russian painters engage with the (Soviet) past will be one of the threads running through the series, it will by no means be its exclusive focus. We begin our series with a discussion with New York-based Yevgeniy Fiks. In his series of portraits devoted to current members of the American Communist party, Fiks explores his personal position with regard … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

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 by Ileana Pintilie (Timisoara) ·

Drawing for Freedom An Interview with Dan Perjovschi

Dan Perjovschi lives and works in Bucharest. Recent exhibitions: Naked Drawings, Ludwig Museum, Cologne, Germany (2005) and Le quartier Centre d’Art Contemporain, Quimper, France (with Nahum Tevet, 2004); Drawing-Drawing, Gregor Podnar Gallery Lublijana (with Goran Petarcol, 2004)); Attila, Protokoll studio Cluj (2004); No Idea, Schnittraum, Cologne, Germany (2004).

Ileana Pintilie: Dan Perjovschi, you are one of the very few Romanian artists who built themselves an international career without leaving the country, a success story that is hard to explain from a domestic perspective. What was your formation like and what path did you choose later?

Dan Perjovschi: My formation was … Read more

ARTMargins Online: New Media & Film

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 by Aleksei Semenenko (Stockholm) ·

Grigori Kozintsev’s “Hamlet”

 Hamlet. Directed by Grigori Kozintsev. Lenfilm, 1964. DVD release RUSCICO, 2000.

Tech specs. Video: 140 (70+70) min, b/w, 16:9, NTSC/PAL. Sound: Mono & Dolby Digital 5.1. Made in Russia, region-free.Grigori Kozintsev’s Hamlet was released in 1964. The film has won several international awards, including the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival,and has become a classic in the world of cinematography, having secured Kozintsev a place in the history of the Hamlet canon. The fact that Kozintsev’s masterpiece appeared on DVD, with restored video and audio, is absolutely thrilling. To my knowledge, this is the first digitally … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

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 by Allan Siegel (New York/Budapest) ·

An Interview with Róza El-Hassan on the occasion of her exhibition at the Mücsarnok (Kunsthalle) in Budapest, July-September 2006

Allan Siegel: Let’s begin with a broad, very general question about curating. There are many aspects to curating–how do you see its importance.

Róza El-Hassan: It’s a very pragmatic question. The most important thing about curating is to be able to communicate about art and what artists do. Especially in Hungary, it is very important to be able to communicate our work to the public. Not all curators agree with this.

A.S.: Do you think there is a problem (in the region) that there are not enough people who have the skills to curate?

R.E.: Before the changes (ed note: … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles

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 by Augustin Ioan (Bucharest) ·

The History of Nothing: Contemporary Architecture and Public Space in Romania

Researching Communist architecture is a tricky endeavor in contemporary Romania, where some major actors of that era are still alive, some even still in charge, and are not exactly interested in opening up archives for investigation and interpretation.

This and many other reasons explain perhaps why there is almost no research in the history of the present or future state of the built public realm (spaces, edifices, monuments and memorials, collective dwelling). Taught in a post-Beaux Arts and then post-Bauhaus school of architecture, where information was scarce and delayed, where drawing skills were the exclusive requirement for admission, and architectural … Read more