ARTMargins

Contemporary art across the evolving global peripheries

Monthly Archive: July 2010

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Yulia Tikhonova (New York) ·

Yevgeniy Fiks at Winkleman Gallery (Exhib. Review)

Yevgeniy Fiks, Ayn Rand in Illustrations, Winkleman Gallery, New York, June 18 – July 30, 2010

Over a long history, image and text have related in complicated ways. But one idea remains constant: that when placed in juxtaposition to each other, we expect important connections to be revealed.

In his exhibition at the Winkleman Gallery, Ayn Rand in Illustrations, Yevgeniy Fiks adds another layer of complexity to this relationship; as an émigré from a former anti-capitalist state (the Soviet Union), he has decided to confront the work of one of the most vehement capitalist populists. The fact that Rand was … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles

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 by Bob Jarvis (London) ·

Impressions from the 4th Bucharest Biennale (Article)

The Bucharest Biennale runs until July 25th at various venues in Bucharest, and with a series of parallel events in Stockholm (3 June to 24 September). For details go to www.bucharestbiennale.org.

I arrived at Bucharest’s retro-communist, chaotic airport the day when there were large demonstrations in the streets of Romania’s capital. Most of the demonstrators were over 60, and they were protesting against the cuts of their state-pensions.  It is a mystery where the money sent to Romania by the IMF has gone.  It’s not a mystery, however, to the locals on the Crânga?i tram: “Este putrezire,” they shrug, … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

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 by Corinna Kirsch (Chicago) ·

The Seductiveness of the Interval at the Renaissance Society (Exhib. Review)

Stefan Constantinescu, Andrea Faciu, Ciprian Muresan, and studioBASAR. The Seductiveness of the Interval, The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, Co-organized with the Romanian Cultural Institute
Alina Serban, curator, May 2-June 27, 2010.

The interval, more than just an empty, liminal space, allows for a gooey, messy mélange of works that are at once sensuous, affective, and intimate, while pointing to the harsh realities of a world plagued by hope at the same time as despair. The artists featured in this exhibition are also stuck in an interval: they are old enough to have come of age during Communist … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Articles

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 by Almira Ousmanova (Vilnius) ·

Flashmob – the Divide Between Art and Politics in Belarus (Long version/Articles)

Introduction

This article represents a (drastically) revised version of a text(Альмира Усманова «Белорусский détournement, или искусство обходного маневра как политика» // Топос, # 13 (2/2006), сс.91 – 127.)* originally published in 2006 in a special volume of the academic journal of philosophy and cultural theory, Topos.(The journal was launched in 2000 and is published by European Humanities University in Vilnius. See the archive of the journal: http://topos.ehu.lt/zine/index.htm.) The entire volume, entitled “Choice and Elections,” was dedicated to the phenomenon of political (non)participation in contemporary Belarus, or more precisely, to the paradox of the political … Read more

ARTMargins Online: Book Reviews

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 by Barbara A. Kaminska (Santa Barbara, CA) ·

Sheila Skaff, “The Law of the Looking Glass” (Book Review)

The Law of the Looking Glass. Cinema in Poland, 1896–1939. Sheila Skaff. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2008. 245 pp.

The intriguing title of Sheila Skaff’s survey of history of cinema in Poland before World War II is taken from a book written by an eye-witness, the critic and film theoretician Karol Irzykowski: “For only half of the world is ruled by the principle of action; the other half is subject to the laws of reflection.”(Karol Irzykowski, Dziesiąta muza: Zagadnienia estetyczne kina (Warsaw: Filmowa Agencja Wydawnicza, 1957), 51. Skaff, Shelia, trans.) Irzykowski’s understanding of cinema as … Read more