Category: ARTMargins Online: Exhibition Reviews

Russia Redux #1, 17 September – 17 October 2005, Schroeder Romero Gallery, New York City

It is a more interesting combination than art and beauty, or art and domestic interiors, but it presents the viewer with a dilemma: how do I evaluate the art without also evaluating the politics? In other words, can I possibly relate to the artworks without also delving into the political point of view, and is my appreciation of the artworks dependent upon my acceptance of the politics?

I would say no. The idea of a completely formal analysis is absolutely vacuous: the notion that … Read more

RUSSIA! 16 September 2005 – 11 January 2006, Guggenheim Museum, New York 

The exhibition RUSSIA!, which opened at the NYC Guggenheim in September 2005, has become the subject of heated debates among cultural commentators both in the West and in Russia. Because of the symbolic value of the venue, the show is catalyzing discourse about the state of affairs with Russian art, the post-Soviet condition, and the representation of Russian art in the West today.

The organizers of RUSSIA! rightfully claimed that this exhibition was “…the most comprehensive and spectacular showing of Russian art ever sent to the United … Read more

RUSSIA! 16 September 2005 – 11 January 2006, Guggenheim Museum, New York

The magnificent RUSSIA! exhibition at the Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum in New York(<http://www.guggenheim.org/russia>), introduced to the public as “the most comprehensive exhibition of Russian art ever shown in the United States,” features over 270 “of the greatest masterworks of Russian art, from the thirteenth century to the present, many traveling for the first time outside Russia.”(<http://www.guggenheim.org/press_office.cgi?which=/press_releases/release_116.html>)

As indicated on the wall preceding the display, it is “realized under the patronage of Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation” and “organized … Read more

Deisis, October 2004, State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow 

The project Deisis/Forthcoming exhibited at the State Tretyakov gallery in October 2004 shocked Moscow’s art community like no other exhibition before. Under their irony, critics barely disguised their rage and even alarm. According to them, the project only pretended to be an example of advanced art, being in reality a threat against it.

One can imagine that the computerized version entitled Deisis/Anthropology (shown at the Moscow Biennale as part of the “Art Digital” project in Mars gallery) will give rise to a similar reaction. It seems that the artists succeeded in seriously … Read more

Marysia Lewandowska and Neil Cummings, Enthusiasts from Amateur Film Clubs 25 June – 29 August 2004, Centrum Sztuki Wspolczesnej, Warsaw

Walter Benjamin produced his most unambiguously Marxist statement about art in his 1934 lecture “Der Autor als Produzent.” Stepping back from inflamed Weimar debates about the politically correct form of progressive art, he maintained that to argue the case for one artistic language over another was to miss the point.

Whether socialist realism was more legible than abstraction was not the issue; the key challenge for Marxist culture, he maintained, was to wrest the technologies of reproduction from the bourgeoisie.… Read more

MICROPOL, 1-13 November 2004, SKC Gallery, Belgrade

The system of art stands for a network of diverse instances taking constitutive part in the definition, formation, and production of meaning and knowledge in contemporary art. All these instances represent and relate to different institutions and institutional parameters as much as to the institutionalized roles and responsibilities in the professional field of contemporary art.

It should be made clear at the very beginning that the reference towards Contemporary Art in general is here principally bound by the idea of the System of Art, conceived of the Institution of Art, its broadest … Read more

Privatisierungen, 16 May – 26 June 2004, Kunst-Werke, Berlin

In the course of the scientific project “The Post-Communist Condition,” which deals with cultural reactions to the political and social situation in Eastern Europe after the collapse of communism, the art and media theoretician Boris Groys launched an exhibition on contemporary art.

The exhibition, called “Privatisierungen. Zeitgenössische Kunst aus Osteuropa” (“Privatizations. Contemporary art from Eastern Europe”), was shown in the Berliner exhibition hall Kunst-Werke from 16th May until 26th June.

“Privatisierungen“ concentrates on projects, mostly photographs and video art, that present what Groys calls a kind of “private appropriation” of … Read more

The Critic’s Choice, Gallery of the Culture Center, Belgrade, January 8-24, 2004

The traditional annual exhibition The Critic’s Choice this year features the selection entitled Old Now by the assistant minister of culture and curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Mr. Jovan Despotovic.

The author has decided to deviate from the usual practice of basing his selection on the artists who have exhibited during the previous year.

Instead, he chose to present the current work of the group of authors who were gathered at the exhibition entitled New Now more than twenty years ago: Darja Kacic, Milovan Destil … Read more

Futura, Prague, 11 November – 4 January

The exhibition of shortlisted works for the 2003 Chalupecky Prize at Prague’s FUTURA contemporary art space, can best be summed up with two words: Kristof Kintera.

Among this year’s finalists—a list which also includes Ján Manzuka, Michaela Thelenová, Jan Lerych, Michal Pechounek—only Kristof Kintera has presented anything like a credible claim to the Czech Repulic’s premier award for contemporary art—an award which has gained increasingly in notoriety in recent years due more to the quality of the successive scandals surrounding it than to the quality of the competition.

The only artist to approach … Read more

Namesti Jana Palacha, Prague, June-October 2004

Recently there have been a number of interesting exhibitions mounted at the Philosophy Faculty building on Námesti Jana Palacha, curated by Ondrej Hrab.

One of these in particular stands out and deserves mention: Ondrej Tucek’s series of found objects, previously on show at Klub v Jelení, the Catholic House in Telc, Sazavou castle, and Muncipal Theatre, Cesky Krumlov.

Using plastic bottles, steel wires, torn wrappers, bricks, cardboard tubes, half-eaten biscuits, stiboglyphics, and other ephemeral tracings of industrial and urban activity, Tucek’s work charts what could be called the “inventions” of mimesis in objects which … Read more

Berlin – Moscow/Moscow – Berlin 1950-2000, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, 27 September 2003 – 1 May 2004 

The exhibition review is one of the most unmerciful genres created by literal cultures. In this context the critic’s iconoclasm takes subtle revenge for the disregard of the written word after the so-called “pictorial turn” in Western societies.

Trying a shaky balance between ekphrasis, elevating the review to the status of pictorial art, and textual criticism of pictures demonstrating the domination of verbal over visual discourse, the reviewer shifts from the position of a viewer to that of a reader, often playing off … Read more

Home Gallery, Prague, 17 December – January 30 

To correspond with its first anniversary, HOME Gallery will be hosting an exhibition of recent works on paper by Pierre Daguin.

This show, Daguin’s first in Prague for several years, represents part of a larger series of recent works including a selection of photographs (“Philip Morris,” “Kuchen und Lugger” and “Psychosex”), several “antipersonnel bombs,” an installation entitled the “Children of Marcos” (weapon-toys) and the White Book (a book of collage about terrorism).

For the installation of “drawings” at HOME Gallery this December-January, Daguin will be exhibiting a series of faux-naif renderings of … Read more

Inke Arns, Neue Slowenische Kunst – NSK: Laibach, Irwin, Gledališce sester Scipion Nasice, Kozmokineticno gledališce rdeci pilot, Kozmokineticni kabinet Noordung, Novi kolektivizem. Eine Analyse ihrer künstlerischen Strategien im Kontext der 1980er Jahre in Jugoslawien (An analysis of their artistic strategies in the context of the 80s in Yugoslavia), Museum Ostdeutsche Galerie (MOG), Regensburg 2002. 

The German name Neue Slowenische Kunst, New Slovene Art, is maybe a less known name for the Slovene artists’ collective that consists of more well-known sub-collectives such as the ideologically provocative and often controversial percept music group Laibach, the five-person painters’ collective Irwin, the performance group … Read more

Ileana Pintilie, Actionism in Romania During the Communist Era. Bucharest, 2001 

At the beginning of the 1960’s Paul Neagu placed his art objects in black boxes, making them invisible for the spectator. With this allegory on the situation of Romanian art Neagu succeeded in expressing what could not be seen: art outside of censorship. Like everywhere ‘in the east’, Romanian art remained in the back rooms, where it either discreetly fit itself into its environment, so as to remain unnoticed, or secretly simulated actions of everyday life. The art of concealed action became a form of articulation in … Read more