ARTMargins

Contemporary art across the evolving global peripheries

Monthly Archive: January 2010

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Roni Ginach (Berlin) ·

Communism Never Happened at Feinkost, Berlin (Review)

Communism Never Happened, Galerie Feinkost, Berlin. November 7, 2009 – December 20, 2009

For someone whose personal experience of communism does not go beyond its Cold War Hollywood runoffs, curating a show entitled Communism Never Happened might appear a bit out of range. But Aaron Moulton, the director of Feinkost Galerie in Berlin, doesn’t have much of a desire to talk about communism. “I don’t think that’s my job,” he says. “I’ve never even read any Marx.”

Opening the exhibition to correspond with the German capital’s celebration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall, Moulton and his … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles

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 by Peter McCarthy (Sydney) ·

Peter McCarthy (Sydney)

The Wall at once became the leitmotif of a marginalist disposition in Western Europe and a breath of life into the progressive de-Stalinization of cultural production in Eastern Europe. Culture was being produced—conveniently on both political sides—at the margin evinced now by each side, as the symptom of a confounding contradiction between an existential homeland and the margins of that very homeland. The post-Stalinist era in Eastern Europe was already bringing a degree of artistic freedom as new—if largely formalist—developments in creative media were expanding the Weltanshauung of the Eastern Bloc and certain cultural quarters of the West were looking … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Book Reviews

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 by Chris Byrne (Dundee) ·

Jeremy Howard, “East European Art 1650-1950” (Book Review)

East European Art 1650-1950. Jeremy Howard. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006., 258 pp.

“The aim here,” states Jeremy Howard in his introduction, “is a redefinition of what may be considered the art of eastern Europe.” Ambitious enough, one might think, but he goes on to proclaim that the book should “at least partially, deconstruct some of the prevailingnotions and myths of what comprises European art per se.”(Jeremy Howard, East European Art 1650-1950, (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 1. Original emphasis retained.) Clearly, the author has set out to write a … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Interviews

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 by Sven Spieker ·

“Communism Never Happened” – A Conversation With Aaron Moulton (Berlin)

This podcast was created on January 8, 2010 (Sven Spieker, Aaron Moulton). Aaron Moulton is the owner of the gallery FEINKOST in Berlin. The exhibition Communism Never Happened took place November 7th – December 20th, 2009 at Feinkost Gallery. Participating artists: Ciprian Mure?an, David Levine, Julien Bismuth, Luchezar Boyadjiev, Lucia Nimcova, Patrick Tuttofuoco, REP Group, Sean Snyder, Yang Zhenzhong, Anetta Mona Chi?a & Lucia Tká?ová.

 

ARTMargins Online: Articles

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 by Katja Praznik (Ljubljana) ·

A Short Guide to Contemporary Art in Slovenia (“Short Guide Series”) (Article)

I was invited to write an essay that would shed some light on the conditions of art production in Slovenia. Despite the “objective” logic that such a request implies, to somehow synthesize the views on the state and process of art production in a country, I cannot avoidapproaching the topic from a very personal point of view, as I am myself involved in many of the issues and stakes that comprise the contemporary art scene of Slovenia.

I am the editor-in-chief of Maska, a performing arts journal published by a private organization that is struggling to survive in the … Read more