Aktuelles

Exhibition: Arne Schmitt / Nico Joana Weber. Alleinanspruch (Sole Claim)

04 February – 30 April 2017

Opening: Fri 3 February, 7 pm

Temporary Gallery, Centre for contemporary art, Mauritiuswall 35, 50676 Cologne, Germany

Curated by Regina Barunke

Under the title „Alleinanspruch (Sole Claim)“ the Cologne based artists Arne Schmitt and Nico Joana Weber present an exciting interplay between photography and film, focussing the notion of the so-called ‘autonomous being’ and the notion of the artist individual. The exhibition features solely new works by the artists.

The architect’s gaze at the world: a storage of resources, a terrain to conquer, a plinth for his creation. In Ayn Rand’s novel “The Fountainhead”, the protagonist Howard Roark is not only an ideal model of the modern architect, whose buildings are not obliged to any tradition or community; at the same time he is a radical individualist, acting autonomously and creating autopoietically. This exaggerated manifestation of a fully emancipated subject – a phantasm of unfettered capitalism, as Rand constantly preached it – has its price: everyone is on his own. This paradox of being unbound is at the core of the exhibition “Alleinanspruch (Sole Claim)” conceived by Arne Schmitt and Nico Joana Weber. In his photographic series and the film “Mit weniger mehr schaffen (Make more with less)”, from 2016, Schmitt, addresses the practical side of modernism. Based on architect Ernst Neufert’s “Bauentwurfslehre (Architects’ Data)” and his buildings in Darmstadt Ledigenheim (Bachelors’ Hostel, 1952-55), he analyses the consequences of rationalisation and standardisation for the individual. Nico Joana Weber’s extensive installation featuring the new 3-channel video-projection “Land of Enchantment” is devoted to an area whose harsh climatic and geographic conditions defy human habitation. In New Mexico’s Tularosa Basin there are five locations encapsulating the history of mankind in a confined space with heavy contrasts in a kind of time lapse. The experience of landscape takes place here in sensed solitude. One is thrown back upon oneself, grasping the limits of what can be shaped permanently.

Arne Schmitt is a guest professor for Photography at HfbK – University of Fine Arts of Hamburg. Last year he received the renowned Karl Schmidt-Rottluff Scholarship and the 2013 Advancement Award of Documentary Photography of Wüstenrot Stiftung. Schmitt is concerned with social contexts of architecture in photography, video and text. For this exhibition he deals with the Bauhaus architect Ernst Neufert and his „Bachelors’ Hostel“ built in 1952-55 in the Mathildenhöhe in Darmstadt, Germany.

Nico Joana Weber received the Villa Romana Fellowship in 2016. In her new 3-channel video installation “Land of Enchantment” she examines the elemental and civilized structures of five different places in New Mexico, disclosing human history like in a time lapse.

Opening hours: Thu-Fri 2-6 pm, Sat-Sun 1-5 pm (special opening hours during Art Cologne, 26-29 April, 10 am-6 pm)

Free Admission

04.02. – 30.04.2017

Opening: Fr, 03.02., 19 Uhr / 7 pm

Temporary Gallery. Zentrum für zeitgenössische Kunst e.V. Mauritiuswall 35 50676 Köln, Germany

Exhibition: Elfriede Mejchar

Elfriede Mejchar: ROAD TRIP mit PÜPPI, 17.01. – 24.02.2017, Kro Art Contemporary

Elfriede Mejchar: 1924 born in Vienna, 1961 Mastership examination at the Federal Education and Research Institute for Graphics, 1952 – 1984 photograph for the Austrian Federal Office for the Protection of Monuments, since 1984 Freelance photographer. For Elfriede Mejchar photographie was her job. During her work for the Federal Office she documented the austrian cultural heritage. And during these 32 years, while she was travelling all around Austria, she also managed to work on private projects and series about scarecrows and hotel rooms, wastelands and wrecked cars, industries and power plants, barns and much more.

She developed her own topics and themes, and she worked on them over decades, creating a deep and very interesting photographic work. During the last years Elfriede Mejchar won many awards and her work has been exhibited in various galleries, collections and museums.

For the exhibition „ROAD TRIP mit PÜPPI“ she chose to show photographies from two different series.

Kro Art contemporary
A-1060 Wien, Getreidemarkt 15

EEB7 – Fabricated Histories. Fact and Fiction in Recent History

IEEB (International Experimental Engraving Biennial) in Bucharest is focused on various aspects of printmaking seen as a contemporary art medium with a broad technical and visual offer, going beyond its traditional approach. IEEB encourages experiment, challenging conventional perceptions, re-defining and re-contextualizing engraving techniques as powerful tools of representation in contemporary art. IEEB functions as a counter-space for discussing the role of printmaking in contemporary art, not as a separate chapter but as a statement of inclusion. The art of print in our view is seen as a combination between technique and concept as well as an intersectional and transversal medium of expression, combining traditional techniques with performance, video art, sculpture and object.

IEEB7 will focus on our recent history with local as well as global reference constructing a counter-space for understanding/questioning/revealing/identifying/imagining the way history has been or it is being written. Approaching the relationship between fiction and historiography Linda Hutcheon observes the issue of source authority, the unstable notions of construction, reception, distribution: fiction and historiography are simultaneously used and abused, installed and turned upside down, affirmed and denied.

Written and oral history, historical files, archives can be created or interpreted and manipulated. From schoolbooks, television broadcast and tabloids, from academic publications to satires and wikileaks, from secret services files to archives, and last but not least from art criticism to history and theory of art, this project aims to question mechanisms of writing and fabricating histories and their impact on personal and collective memory.

IEEB7 will create a platform for contemporary art production through the use of print techniques and concepts with the purpose of reflecting on the factual/truth (writing/telling) and fictional dimensions of our recent histories.

Period: 25.10.2016 – 25.02.2017

The list of participating artists:

Ana Adamović (SRB)
Ana Golici (USA/RO)
Ana Hoffner (AT)
Cătălin Burcea (RO)
Christine Niehoff (DE)
Corina Ilea (CAN/RO)
Dylan McMannus (US)
Elana Katz (DE)
Judith Saupper (AT)
Mihai Zgondoiu (RO)
Olivia Mihălțianu (RO)
Sandra Sterle (HR)
Silvia Trăistaru (RO)
Sorin Oncu (RO/SRB)
Zsolt Asztalos (HUN)

IEEB7 Sponsors: ERSTE – Asset Management, Sâmburești

Partners: Goethe Institute, Austrian Cultural Forum, Balassi Institute – Hungarian Institute from Bucharest, Victoria Art Centre, National Museum of Natural History Grigore Antipa, Alert Studio, The Institute of Art History G. Opescu of the Romanian Academy, WASP-Working Art Space and Production,  For Culture, Cărturești, Aiurart Contemporary Art Space in Bucharest, Atelier 030202

Exhibition: Amie Siegel – Strata

South London Gallery, Friday, 20th January to Sunday, 26th March 2017

For New York-based artist Amie Siegel’s first solo show in London, the South London Gallery presents recent works which explore the mechanisms through which objects become imbued with meaning. Known for her layered, meticulously constructed works that consider the undercurrents of value systems, cultural ownership and image-making, Siegel works across film, video, photography, performance and installation.

Quarry, 2015, projected at cinematic scale in the SLG’s main gallery, traces the excavation of marble from the deepest underground quarry in the world to its almost inevitable use in the modern luxury apartments of Manhattan skyscrapers. Beautiful, formally rigorous, and pointedly underscored by dramatic orchestral sound, this moving image work draws us into a mesmerising exposé of the multi-layered relationships between art, labour and value.

Fetish, 2016, presented in the first floor galleries, delves further into the stratified relationships between culture, value, and material by focusing on Sigmund Freud’s personal collection of archaeological statues and artefacts. Filmed at the Freud Museum in north London, it portrays the annual nocturnal cleaning of the psychoanalyst’s collection, suggesting an analogy between the careful, almost ritualistic removal of layers of dust from the objects and the intimate excavations and disclosures of analysis, both of which are normally hidden from view.

Proposing a conceptual link between Fetish and Quarry, Siegel presents a new work in the second upstairs gallery – a fragment of pink marble from the lobby of New York’s Trump Tower. Offered for sale on eBay immediately following the 2016 US election, the marble fragment was purchased by the artist. The fragment’s transformations, from having had a clear use within a building into an apparently functionless piece of rock, and then into a historic relic, are both continued and emphasised through its incorporation into Siegel’s work. Parallel narratives are therefore set in motion, both with the material concerns of Quarry, and the potentially infinite circular conversations around the themes of objecthood and desire explored within Fetish.

 
Biography
Amie Siegel (b. 1974, Chicago, USA) works variously between film, video, photography, performance and installation. Known for her layered, meticulously constructed works that trace and perform the undercurrents of systems of value, cultural ownership and image-making, the artist’s recent solo exhibitions include The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich; Kunstmuseum Stuttgart and the MAK, Vienna.Siegel has participated in group exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; Hayward Gallery, London; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; CCA Wattis, San Francisco; MoMA PS1; MAXXI Museum, Rome; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. Her work is in public collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate Modern and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Her films have screened at the Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and New York Film Festivals, The Museum of Modern Art, New York and The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. She has been a fellow of the DAAD Berliner-Künstlerprogramm and the Guggenheim Foundation, the Fulton Fellow at The Film Study Center at Harvard University, a recipient of the ICA Boston’s Foster Prize, Sundance Institute and Creative Capital Awards.

More information: http://www.southlondongallery.org

 

Kochi-Muziris Biennale

Forming in the pupil of an eye
December 12, 2016–March 29, 2017

Yesterday, India’s largest contemporary art exhibition, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (KMB), opened to a crowd of thousands, marking the start of three months of contemporary art, culture and design in the city of Kochi. Titled Forming in the pupil of an eye, the third edition of the Biennale will run for 108 days until March 29, 2017, with works by 97 artists displayed in heritage properties, public spaces, and galleries across Fort Kochi and Ernakulam.

Curator Sudarshan Shetty said, “Reflecting back into the world as much as it takes in, the eye is a mirror for the world. Forming in the pupil of an eye is not an image of one reality but a reflection of multiple realities and of multiple possibilities in time. Forming in the pupil of an eye brings that multiplicity of experience together within the space of Kochi-Muziris Biennale. It was therefore important for this, my first curation of the biennale, that we address multiple artistic art forms.”

In keeping with its curatorial vision, this edition of the Biennale attempts to question and blur the boundaries that categorise the various disciplines of artistic expression. With a healthy mix of both international and local artists, KMB 2016 will feature works by visual artists, architects, poets, musicians and performance professionals from diverse cultural and artistic traditions. Illustrating this inclusion of figures from fields not normally associated with contemporary art, is the work by Slovenian poet, novelist and essayist Aleš Šteger, whose pyramid-like structure is installed at Aspinwall House. Similarly, architect Tony Joseph has created The Biennale Pavilion, an artwork in itself, which is hosting the Artists’ cinema, seminar and performance programme. Alicja Kwade’s installation at Mattancherry warehouse involves the manipulation of the structural properties of everyday objects.

Performance pieces feature strongly in the biennale programme, including the work of Anamika Haksar, New York-based Japanese artist Aki Sasamoto with a performance-based installation and Zuleikha Chaudhari whose video and performance work is on show at Aspinwall House. Literary works are also a feature of the biennale, such as the experimental literature of author and poet Sharmistha Mohanty. Multi-disciplinary artists have been selected; such as artist, composer and performer Hanna Tuulikki, whose immersive ethereal spaces weave connections between oral tradition, ecology, language and archaeology, evidenced by her piece Sourcemouth: Liquidbody, commissioned for the Biennale.

The Kochi Biennale Foundation (KBF), in collaboration with the Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA) and the Foundation for Indian Art and Education (FIAE), has also developed the Students’ Biennale, an exhibitory platform which runs parallel to the KMB. Led by 15 young curators, this project reaches out to state-funded art colleges across the country, to encourage young artists to reflect on their practice and exhibit on an international stage. Through multiple institution visits, workshops, interventions and engagements, the curators bring together young artists from all around India to showcase their talents at exhibition venues in Kochi.

At the opening, KBF co-founders Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu said, “Building on our year-round programme of activity, we are excited to welcome the artists and visitors to attend the opening of the third edition of the Kochi Biennale. This is the result of hard work from a great team and the curatorial vision of Sudarshan Shetty. We are delighted to give artists the opportunity to create works in our city and we are proud to be able to present internationally recognized cultural activities to the community in Kochi and in wider India. This is the People’s Biennale.”

Symposium: “A New Fascism?”

December 17, 2016, 10:30 am–7 pm

Fridericianum
Friedrichsplatz 18
34117 Kassel
Germany

In conjunction with the exhibition Two A.M. by Loretta Fahrenholz, the Fridericianum is hosting a symposium devoted to an exposition of new forms of fascism. In her novel entitled Nach Mitternacht (After Midnight, 1937), Irmgard Keun describes everyday life in Nazi Germany in the late 1930s under the dominant influences of fear, government control, and despotism. In her current exhibition at the Fridericianum, artist Loretta Fahrenholz calls attention to similar contemporary phenomena. Based loosely on Keun’s exile novel, her Two A.M. is a socio-fiction film in which she presents frightening analogies to present-day surveillance, capitalism and re-emerging fascism.

One of the essential characteristics of representatives of the new Right, from the Hungarian Prime Minister to Marine Le Pen, is that they all regard themselves as democrats. And when we listen to them, they seem to become more democratic every day. Without blushing, the AfD compares itself to the Third Reich resistance group known as the “Weiße Rose.” And the French Front National proudly points out that it was the only party in France whose members voted in a democratic referendum on the European constitution. All of the established parties in France had refused to take part in such a referendum for fear that the European constitution would ultimately be rejected.

Thus the obscurity of European institutions can surely be cited as one of the reasons for the emergence of new right-wing movements in all European countries. And the increasing popularity of the new right-wing and nationalist parties can also be attributed at least in part to the movements of migrants and refugees, which are certain to continue unabated in the foreseeable future. We must agree with Zeev Sternhell, who insists that the fascist mentality that emerged in the early 20th century never really disappeared. Fascist currents have always existed in more or less visible form, and they are now reappearing in a new guise. Fascism has reinvented itself, as Alain Badiou pointed out ten years ago. It has assumed new forms which must be analyzed. And the old theories regarding fascism are no longer adequate for that purpose.

10:30am–1pm
Susanne Pfeffer
Introduction
Franco “Bifo” Berardi
“A Short History of the Humiliation: National Workerism and the Showdown of Two Centuries of Colonialism”
Wilhelm Heitmeyer
“Group-Focused Enmity, Social Disintegration and Right-Wing Populism in a Process of Escalation”

2–4pm
Chantal Mouffe
“The Populist Moment”
G. M. Tamás
“Fascism Without Fascism”

4:30–7pm
Didier Eribon
“What’s Next? Reflections on the Categories of Political Theory”
Panel discussion
Moderated by Gernot Kamecke

All lectures will be in English.
Admission is free—please rsvp to symposium@fridericianum.org.

The exhibition Loretta Fahrenholz. Two A.M. is on view at Fridericianum until January 1, 2017

Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2017

This year’s shortlist for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2017 celebrates established photographic narratives alongside experimental and conceptual approaches to documentary, landscape and portraiture. All of this year’s nominated artists investigate questions of truth and fiction, doubt and certainty, what constitutes the real and ideal and the relationship between the observer and the observed.

Works by the four shortlisted photographers will be exhibited at The Photographers’ Gallery from 3 March until 11 June 2017 and subsequently presented at the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt from 29 June until 17 September 2017.

The winner will be announced at a special award ceremony during the exhibition run at The Photographers’ Gallery in London.

Jury:

Susan Bright, Curator; Pieter Hugo, Artist; Karolina Lewandowska, Curator of Photography at Centre Pompidou Paris; Anne-Marie Beckmann, Director, Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation and Clare Grafik, Head of Exhibitions, The Photographers’ Gallery as the non-voting chair

 

The Shortlist:

Sophie Calle

Sophie Calle (b.1953, France) has been nominated for her publication My All (Actes Sud, 2016) which finds the artist experimenting with yet another medium – the postcard set. Taking stock of her entire œuvre, this set of postcards functions as a beautiful portfolio of Calle’s work, as well as a new investigation of it, in an appropriately nomadic format. Over the past thirty years, Sophie Calle has invited strangers to sleep in her bed, followed a man through the streets of Paris to Venice, hired a detective to spy on herself before providing a report of her day, and asked blind people to tell her about the final image they remember. In doing so, she has orchestrated small moments of life, establishing a game, then setting its rules for herself and for others.

Dana Lixenberg

Dana Lixenberg (b. 1964, The Netherlands) has been nominated for her publication Imperial Courts (Roma, 2015 / reviewed in Camera Austria International 133). In 1992, Dana Lixenberg travelled to South Central Los Angeles for a magazine story on the riots that erupted following the verdict in the Rodney King trial. What she encountered inspired her to revisit the area, and led her to the community of the Imperial Courts housing project in Watts. Returning countless times over the following twenty-two years, Lixenberg gradually created a collaborative portrait of the changing face of this community. Over the years, some in the community were killed, while others disappeared or went to jail, and others, once children in early photographs, grew up and had children of their own. In this way, Imperial Courts constitutes a complex and evocative record of the passage of time in an underserved community.

Awoiska van der Molen

Awoiska van der Molen (b. 1972, The Netherlands) has been nominated for her exhibition Blanco at Foam Fotografie Museum, Amsterdam (22 Jan – 3 Apr 2016). Van der Molen creates black and white, abstracted images that revitalise the genre of landscape photography. Spending long periods of time in solitude and silence in foreign landscapes, from Japan to Norway to Crete, she explores the identity of the place, allowing it to impress upon her its specific emotional and physical qualities and her personal experience within it. With this intuitive approach van der Molen aims to find a pure form of representing her surroundings, by focusing on the essential elements in and around her. Her work questions how natural and manmade environments are commonly represented and interacted with.

Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs

Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs (both b. 1979, Switzerland) have been nominated for their exhibition EURASIA at Fotomuseum Winterthur (24 Oct 15 – 14 Mar 16). EURASIA playfully draws on the iconography of the road trip constructing experiences drawn from memory and imagination. Onorato and Krebs’ journey begins in Switzerland, continues through the Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, and ends in Mongolia. Throughout their travels the duo encounters landscapes and people in a state of ongoing transition from ancient traditions and post-Communist structures to modernity and the formation of an independent identity. Using a mix of analogue media and techniques including 16mm films, large-format plate cameras and installation-based interventions, Onorato and Krebs compose a narrative that is as much fiction as documentation.

Gabi Ngcobo Appointed as Curator of the 10th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art

The Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, which has been funded since its fourth edition by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation) as an “outstanding cultural event,” is delighted to announce Gabi Ngcobo as the curator of the upcoming 10th Berlin Biennale.

Since the early 2000s Gabi Ngcobo has been engaged in collaborative artistic, curatorial, and educational projects in South Africa and on an international scope. She is a founding member of the Johannesburg based collaborative platforms NGO – Nothing Gets Organised and Center for Historical Reenactments (CHR, 2010–14). NGO focusses on processes of self-organization that take place outside of predetermined structures, definitions, contexts, or forms. The CHR responded to the demands of the moment through an exploration of how historical legacies impact and resonate within contemporary art.

Recently Ngcobo co-curated the 32nd Bienal de São Paulo, currently taking place at the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavilion in São Paulo, BR, and A Labour of Love, 2015, at Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main, DE. She has worked at the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town, SA, and at the Cape Africa Platform where she co-curated the Cape07 Biennale, 2007, Cape Town, SA. In the past she has collaborated with various institutions including Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno (CAAM), Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, ES; Durban Art Gallery, SA; Joburg Art Fair, Johannesburg, SA; Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism (JWTC), Johannesburg, SA; LUMA/Westbau, Pool, Zurich, CH; New Museum, Museum as Hub, New York, US; and Raw Material Company, Dakar, SN, amongst others. She has been teaching at the Wits School of Arts, University of Witswatersrand, SA since 2011. Her writings have been published in various catalogues, books, and journals. She currently lives and works in Johannesburg, ZA, and São Paulo, BR, and will move to Berlin for the preparations of the 10th Berlin Biennale.

Gabi Ngcobo already shares connections with the Berlin Biennale: In 2008 she participated in the second edition of the Young Curators Workshop Eyes Wide Open on occasion of the 5th Berlin Biennale, and in 2014 the Center for Historical Reenactments presented its project Digging Our Own Graves 101 as part of the 8th Berlin Biennale.

With the selection of Gabi Ngcobo, the Berlin Biennale continues its mission of serving as an experimental platform for exploring and expanding the format of the exhibition and a curatorial agenda as well as for examining current global discourses and developments in relation to Berlin as a local point of reference.
Past Berlin Biennale curators:

1st Berlin Biennale (1998):    Klaus Biesenbach with Nancy Spector and Hans Ulrich Obrist
2nd Berlin Biennale (2001):    Saskia Bos
3rd Berlin Biennale (2004):    Ute Meta Bauer
4th Berlin Biennale (2006):    Maurizio Cattelan, Massimiliano Gioni and Ali Subotnick
5th Berlin Biennale (2008):    Adam Szymczyk and Elena Filipovic
6th Berlin Biennale (2010):    Kathrin Rhomberg
7th Berlin Biennale (2012):    Artur Zmijewski together with associate curators Voina and Joanna Warsza
8th Berlin Biennale (2014):    Juan A. Gaitán
9th Berlin Biennale (2016):    DIS (Lauren Boyle, Solomon Chase, Marco Roso, David Toro)

The selection committee for the curatorship of the 10th Berlin Biennale consisted of Krist Gruijthuijsen, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, DE; Vasif Kortun, SALT, Istanbul/Ankara, TR; Victoria Noorthoorn, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, AR; Willem de Rooij, Frankfurt/Berlin, DE; Polly Staple, Chisenhale Gallery, London, GB; and Philip Tinari, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, CN.

In order to respond appropriately to its continuous growth and professionalization, the Berlin Biennale has been restructured in parallel with its 20-year anniversary. Up until this point Gabriele Horn was both the director of the Berlin Biennale and KW Institute for Contemporary Art. As of July this year the two institutions are now operating as separate business units under the umbrella of the KUNST-WERKE BERLIN e. V. This enables Gabriele Horn—now director solely of the Berlin Biennale—and her team to further strengthen the institution and make it sustainable and ready for the future while focusing on preparations for the upcoming edition and its accompanying events.

The 10th Berlin Biennale will take place in summer 2018.

Winners of the 2016 Paris Photo – Aperture Foundation Photobook Awards

2016—Paris Photo and Aperture Foundation are pleased to announce the winners of the 2016 edition of the Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards. The Awards this year have been organized in collaboration with C/O Berlin, a Berlin-based charitable institution committed to photography and visual media. Libyan Sugar by Michael Christopher Brown (Twin Palms) is the winner of $10,000 in the First PhotoBook category. The selection for Photography Catalogue of the Year is Wojciech Zamecznik: Photo-graphics by Karolina Puchała-Rojek and Karolina Ziębinńska-Lewandowska (Fundacja Archeologia Fotografii). ZZYZX by Gregory Halpern (MACK) is the winner of PhotoBook of the Year. A Jurors’ Special Mention is also given to Taking Stock of Power: An Other View of the Berlin Wall by Annett Gröschner and Arwed Messmer (Hatje Cantz).

A final jury at Paris Photo selected this year’s winners: Paul Graham (Photographer), Jens Hoffmann (Director of Special Exhibitions and Public Programs, Jewish Museum, New York), Agnès Sire (Director, Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson), Katja Stuke (Artist and Designer, BöhmKobayashi, Düsseldorf), and Thomas Zander (Gallerist).

Thomas Zander said of the First PhotoBook winner, Libyan Sugar, “An impressive book—you feel as though you are in the war with the photographer.” Katja Stuke adds, “Libyan Sugar offers a strong combination of the personal and the documentary.”

“Great photography is the ultimate arbiter,” said Paul Graham; “the outstanding work in Gregory Halpern’s ZZYZX carries the day.”

Wojciech Zamecznik: Photo-graphics, this year’s Photography Catalogue of the Year was “A true discovery,” says Agnès Sire.

This year’s shortlist selection was made by Christoph Wiesner (Artistic Director, Paris Photo), Lesley A. Martin (Creative Director of the Aperture Foundation book program and The PhotoBook Review), David Campany, Ann-Christin Bertrand (Curator, C/O Berlin), and Dr. Rebecca Senf (Chief Curator and Norton Family Curator of Photography at the Center of Creative Photography, Tucson). The shortlist was first announced at the Opening Days of the European Month of Photography on October 1, 2016. The thirty- five selected photobooks are profiled in The PhotoBook Review, issue 011.

Initiated in November 2012 by Aperture Foundation and Paris Photo, the Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards celebrate the photobook’s contribution to the evolving narrative of photography, with three major categories: First PhotoBook, PhotoBook of the Year, and Photography Catalogue of the Year. Since the announcement of the 2015 winners last November, the shortlisted titles have been exhibited in four venues internationally. In total, the 2015 Shortlist was seen in seven countries, including Huis Marseille in Amsterdam, Riga Photomonth in Latvia, the International Festival of Photography in Łódź, Poland, the Landskrona Foto Festival in Sweden, and the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival in Toronto.

Following Paris Photo, the 2016 exhibition of the shortlisted books will travel to Ivorypress, Madrid (November 29, 2016–January 19, 2017), Aperture Gallery, New York (December 10, 2016–February 4, 2017), Düsseldorf Photo Weekend, Germany (February 3–5, 2017), Palm Springs Photo Festival, California (May 7–12, 2017), Lumière Brothers Center for Photography, Moscow (May 2017), Musée des Beaux-Arts, Le Locle, Switzerland (June 17–October 15, 2017), and College of Art and Design, Lesley University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (August 25–October 21, 2017), among other venues.

About the 2016 Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards
PhotoBook of the Year: This prize is awarded to the photographer(s)/artist(s) and publisher responsible for the photobook judged to be the best of the year. Ten books from this category were selected for the shortlist, presented to the jury for the final selection, and exhibited during Paris Photo.

First PhotoBook: A $10,000 prize is awarded to the photographer(s)/artist(s) whose first finished, publicly available photobook is judged to be the best of the year. Twenty books from this category were selected for the shortlist, presented to the jury for the final selection, and exhibited during Paris Photo.

Photography Catalogue of the Year: Awarded to the publication, publisher, and/or organizing institution responsible for the exhibition catalogue or museum publication judged to be the best of the year. Five books from this category were selected for the shortlist, presented to the jury for the final selection, and exhibited during Paris Photo.

Friends With Books 2016

Saturday & Sunday, 10 & 11 December 2016, 11–19h

Reception: Friday, 9 December 2016, 18-20h

Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin (Rieckhallen) Free Entry

FRIENDS WITH BOOKS: ART BOOK FAIR BERLIN 2016
takes place on the weekend of 9–11 December, 2016, at Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum
für Gegenwart – Berlin as Europe’s premier event for contemporary artists’ books and
periodicals by artists and art publishers. Featuring 160+ international participants and a
series of public programmes: discussions, readings, presentations, performances, and art
works that explore the perimeters of today’s art publishing. Admission is free.

The public programmes series ARE YOU FRIENDS WITH BOOKS…? features lectures,
performances, conversations, and panel discussions presented in partnership with Witte de
With Center for Contemporary Art: Defne Ayas; GAGARIN – The Artists in Their Own
Words: Wilfried Huet and Olaf Nicolai; Broken Dimanche Press: John Holten and
Jonathan Monk; Sternberg Press: Lou Cantor and Ariane Müller (Starship); DHL –
Drucken Heften Laden: Uwe Sonnenberg and Christian Berkes (botopress), Jörg
Franzbecker and Heimo Lattner (Berliner Hefte), Achim Lengerer (Scriptings), Yves
Mettler (Zeitschrift), Janine Sack (A Book Edition), and Simon Worthington (Mute);
Gerhard Theewen of Salon Magazine; Camera Austria: Stefanie Seufert and Reinhard
Braun; Edition Patrick Frey: Daniela Comani and Doron Sadja; brumaria: Darío
Corbeira, Jorge Miñano, Miguel Ángel Rego and Hugo López-Castrillo, and others.

The temporary exhibition, it is this flash itself that seduces, presents artworks arising from
texts and books by Bettina Allamoda, Marc Bijl, Beni Bishchof, Brian Kennon, and
Jasper Sebastian Stürup, with a performance by Discoteca Flaming Star. Additionally on
view are solo installations by recent artists-in-residence at Künstlerhaus Bethanien,
Sveinn Fannar Jóhannsson and Lewis & Taggart/The Museum of Longing and Failure.

The annual FRIENDS WITH BOOKS POSTER EDITIONS by Berlin artists features a new
poster edition by Monica Bonvicini; 25 of each edition are signed and numbered and benefit
Friends with Books at a special offer of 50 €. Erik Steinbrecher has created a new edition
to benefit Friends with Books, SCREW, 2016, bronze, 26 cm, edition 5, at 800 €.
FRIENDS WITH BOOKS is organised by Vanessa Adler, argobooks, and Savannah
Gorton, Curator. Friends with Books is a registered non-profit organisation founded in 2014
offering greater visibility to contemporary artists’ books and art publications, including an
annual art book fair, public programming, and partnerships with art organisations and
institutions, facilitating the engagement of diverse audiences with the book works of artists
and publishers worldwide.

160+ PARTICIPANTS :
&: christophe daviet-thery, Paris I *[asterisk], Århus I 2nd Cannons Publications, Los
Angeles I adocs publishing, Hamburg I Afterall, London I Ahorn Books, Berlin I Bettina
Allamoda, Berlin I Anagram Books, London I Arch+, Berlin I Archive Books, Berlin I
argobooks, Berlin I atelier iii, Paris/Tokyo I ATLAS Projectos, Lisbon I Back Bone Books,
Berlin I Clara Bahlsen, Berlin I Belser, Stuttgart I Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art,
Berlin I berlinartbooks, Berlin I Beni Bischof/Laser Magazin, St. Gallen I Black Palm,
Berlin I Boabooks, Geneva I Boekie Woekie, books by artists, Amsterdam I BOM DIA
BOA TARDE BOA NOITE, Berlin I Book Works, London I Brinkmann & Bose, Berlin I
Broken Dimanche Press, Berlin I brumaria, Madrid I bruno, Venice I Bücher & Hefte
Verlag, Leipzig I Camera Austria International, Graz I ChertLüdde, Berlin I Corraini
Edizioni, Mantova I Anita Di Bianco, Berlin/New York I Discoteca Flaming Star, Berlin I
Brad Downey, Berlin I Drittel Books, Berlin I edition fink, Zürich I Edition Patrick Frey,
Zürich I Edizioni Periferia, Lucerne I Edition Taube, Stuttgart I Farbvision, Berlin I
Flanders Arts Institute, Brussels I Fluens Forlag, Copenhagen I Fucking Good Art,
Rotterdam I FUKT, Berlin I GAGARIN, Antwerp I Good Times & Nocturnal News,
Stockholm I Goss Press, New York I THE GREEN BOX, Berlin I Hand Art Publisher, Berlin
I handpicked Tokyo/Berlin, Tokyo/Berlin I Hatje Cantz, Berlin I Homeparkpress, Hamburg
I Humboldt Books, Milan I hurricane publishing, Copenhagen I ImageMovement, Berlin I
JB. Institute, Berlin I Jonas Verlag / VDG Weimar, Weimar I Journal of Aesthetics &
Protest, Leipzig/London/Los Angeles I Miriam Jung, Berlin I Jungle Books, St. Gallen I
Kerber Verlag, Bielefeld/Berlin I Geirmundur Klein, Antwerp I Helga Maria Klosterfelde
Edition, Berlin I Kultur & Gespenster, Hamburg I Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin I KW
Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin I La Plaque Tournante, Berlin I LAGE EGAL, Berlin
I Ines Lechleitner, Berlin I antoine lefebvre editions, Paris I Achim Lengerer, Berlin I
Lodret Vandret, Copenhagen I Lou Cantor, Berlin I Louise Guerra, Paris I Lubok Verlag,
Leipzig I Lugemik, Tallinn I MA BIBLIOTHÈQUE, London I Sara MacKillop, London I
malenki.net, Bielefeld I Martin Schmitz Verlag, Berlin I Materialverlag HFBK, Hamburg I
MD72/Elgarafi, Berlin I MER. Paper Kunsthalle, Ghent I Merve, Berlin I Yves Mettler,
Berlin I Dan Mitchell/Hard Mag, London I MMKoehn Verlag, Berlin/Leipzig I Jonathan
Monk, Berlin/Rome I mono.kultur, Berlin I Motto Books, Berlin I MOREpublishers,
Brussels I Ariane Müller, Berlin I Multinational Enterprises, Oslo I The Museum of
Longing and Failure, Bergen I The Name Books, Basel I Neptún Magazine, Reykjavík I
NERO, Rome I Occasional Papers, London I Olaf Nicolai, Berlin/Leipzig I Occulto, Berlin I
OEI magazine / OEI editör, Stockholm I Onomatopee, Eindhoven I Palefroi, Berlin I
Kirsten Palz, Berlin I PANTOFLE BOOKS, Tilburg I The Paper Channel, Tel Aviv I Paper
Monument, New York I Paraguay, Paris I Peres Projects, Berlin I Pluto Press, London I
PogoBooks, Berlin I Pork Salad Press, Copenhagen I possible books, Berlin I pro qm,
Berlin I PUNCH, Bucharest I rakete.co, Berlin I Raum der Publikation/Muthesius
Kunsthochschule, Kiel I RAUM Italic, Berlin I Red76, Minneapolis I Red Sphinx, Berlin I
Revolver Publishing, Berlin I Ricochet.cc, Berlin/Buenos Aires I Roma Publications,
Amsterdam I Salon Verlag & Edition, Cologne I Karin Sander, Berlin I SAN ROCCO
Magazine, Milan I Anne Schwalbe, Berlin I Seemann Henschel & Co., Leipzig I Stefanie
Seufert, Berlin I Alexandre Singh, New York I Space Poetry, Copenhagen I Sprüth
Magers, Berlin I Starship, Berlin I Erik Steinbrecher, Berlin I Sternberg Press, Berlin I
Studio Jung, Berlin I Swiridoff Verlag, Künzelsau I TEXTE ZUR KUNST, Berlin I Textem
Verlag, Hamburg I Theater der Zeit, Berlin I Gerhard Theewen, Cologne I Ugly Duckling
Presse, New York I Valiz, Amsterdam I Verlag Anton Pustet, Salzburg I Verlag für
moderne Kunst, Vienna I Verlag Silke Schreiber, Munich I Verlag der Buchhandlung
Walther König, Cologne I VEXER, St. Gallen I vonhundert, Berlin I Sergej Vutuc,
Heilbronn I Westphalie Verlag, Vienna I White Fungus, Taichung City I Wienand Verlag,
Cologne I Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam I Wordpharmacy,
Pietrasanta I Yard Press, Rome I Zavod P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E., Ljubljana I ztscrpt, Vienna

Exhibition: Never Leave Me. Photographic Images in Germany Today

With works by: Nina Beier, Louisa Clement, Buck Ellison, Lindsay Lawson, Alwin Lay, Roman Schramm, Mark Soo and Tobias Zielony, curated by Renee Preisler Barasch

November 15–December 12, 2016

Opening: November 15, 6–8pm

On Stellar Rays Project Space, 1 Rivington Street, New York, New York 10002

www.neverleaveme.org / www.onstellarrays.com

We are pleased to announce a group exhibition featuring the works of eight artists who are united by two things: they work with the photographic medium or deal with its legacy, and they are either based in Germany or spent formative years there. The works in the show range from “straight,” documentary-style photography to sculptural and multimedia approaches, video and installation. Many of the artists will be showing their work in the U.S. for the very first time.

The exhibition explores how Germany’s rich photographic past still influences artists today. The show also demonstrates how coming of age after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and in an unprecedented era of image saturation has simultaneously strengthened and challenged the artist’s position to photography.

The title of the show, Never Leave Me: Photographic Images in Germany Today, suggests the complicated dynamic between humans and photographs. Some images can haunt us forever. On the other hand, Never Leave Me is a bittersweet declaration of our dependence on photographs, and a surprisingly deep and addictive desire to look at them.

With a catalog featuring a text by Dominikus Müller, interviews with the artists, and designed by John McCusker.

photo graz 016. Biennale der steirischen Fotokunst.

2016 feiert die Kulturvermittlung Steiermark das 10 Jahre-Jubiläum von photo graz. Mit dieser Fotobiennale verfolgt der Verein das Ziel, die lokale und regionale Fotoszene zu dokumentieren, zu präsentieren und zu vernetzen. Bezeichnend für photo graz ist die Vielfalt der Bildsprache, der inhaltlichen Ansätze und ihrer technischen Ausfertigung. Arrivierte und international tätige Fotokünstler/innen finden sich generationsübergreifend neben Fotostudenten/innen und auch Amateuren/innen.

Graz und die Steiermark hatten sich ab den 1950er Jahren – mehr als damals die Bundeshauptstadt – zu einem Ort der Produktion und Vermittlung progressiver Fotografie entwickelt. Die Protagonisten dieser Zeit trugen maßgeblich dazu bei, die Fotografie als Kunstform in Österreich zu etablieren. Zusätzlich schufen sie wichtige Institutionen um jüngere Generationen in den Grazer Fotoschulen mit Fotokunst zu konfrontieren. Mit dieser Tradition wurde die Stadt zu einem reichen Nährboden für zeitgenössische Kunst und Fotografie.

photo graz wurde 2005 erstmals durchgeführt und wird seit 2006 als Biennale ausgerichtet. Mit jeder Ausgabe wurden rund 200 Fotokünstler/innen und Fotokollektive, geboren oder tätig in der Steiermark, an immer neuen Orten in Graz präsentiert. Mit der Reihe „photo graz selection“ wurden ausgewählte Beiträge in Galerien, Museen und auf Kunstfestivals im benachbarten Ausland auch einem internationalen Publikum vorgestellt.

Dieses Jahr wurden 217 Fotoarbeiten aus dem Zeitraum 2014-2016 eingereicht, die im begleitenden Handbuch und im Internet präsentiert werden. Eine Jury aus vier internationalen Kunstexperten/innen hat daraus 38 Positionen für die Ausstellung im Minoritenkonvent ausgewählt.

Erwin SCHWAB Mario SCHWEIGHOFER Bernd SIEBER Oliver SPILLER Christina TSILIDIS IngridVIEN Klaus Dieter ZIMMER zweintopf Jörg AUZINGER beba fink Tom BIELA Karl CEBUL Peter DITTRICH Claudia GANSBERGER Nicole GREINER Martin HANUS Leon HÖLLHUMER Nicole HOPFER Sylvia HURYNOWICZ Heidrun KOCHER-KOCHER Tereza KRIZMANICH Christian LAPP Moritz LECHNER Alois LOIDL Ulrike MAYRHUBER Bernd OBERDORFER Wolfram ORTHACKER Franz PACHER Klaus PICHLER Manfred PICHLER Robert PICHLER Erwin POLANC Heinz PÖSCHKO Verena ROTKY + Stephan WEIXLER Robert W. SACKL-KAHR SAGOSTIN Franz SATTLER Bianca SCHARLER Nina SCHUIKI

 
Veranstalter: Kulturvermittlung Steiermark
Kuratorische Leitung: Gerhard Gross
Ausstellungstechnik: Team der Kulturvermittlung Steiermark

Jury:
Carl Aigner Museum Niederösterreich, St. Pölten
Michaela Bosáková Central European House of Photography, Bratislava
Gregor Schuster Darmstädter Tage der Fotografie, Darmstadt
Eleni Tsitsirikou Helsinki International Artist Programme, Helsinki

Gefördert durch: Kulturamt der Stadt Graz, Bürgermeisteramt der Stadt Graz, Land Steiermark- Kultur, Europa, Außenbeziehungen

Screening: Oliver Ressler, Emergency Turned Upside-Down

mumok, Vienna, Wednesday, November 30, 2016, 19:00

Two new works by Oliver Ressler refer to the migration and flight that war and conflict in Syria (and other states) have set in motion. Emergency Turned Upside-Down addresses the cynical and inhuman discourse that sees the presence of refugees in Europe as a state of “emergency,” although this term really should be reserved for war, terror, or economic strangulation—the very reasons that lead people to leave their homes. There Are No Syrian Refugees in Turkey is Oliver Ressler’s most recent film, made on the occasion of his solo exhibition at SALT Galata in Istanbul. In it, he allows Syrian refugees living as “guests” in Europe’s largest metropolis to analyze the political reactions of the EU and Turkey.
Program

Oliver Ressler
Emergency Turned Upside-Down, 2016, 16 min
There Are No Syrian Refugees In Turkey, 2016, 30 min

After the screening: talk with Oliver Ressler and Charles Esche

Oliver Ressler lives in Vienna. In 2016 he was the first winner of the Swiss art prize Prix Thun für Kunst und Ethik. Exhibitions (selection): Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo – CAAC, Seville (2015); LENTOS Kunstmuseum, Linz (2014); Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (2010); Berkeley Art Museum (2006).

Charles Esche is a curator and author; director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven and together with Mark Lewis founder and editor of Afterall Journal and Afterall Books, Central St. Martins, London.

€ 6,– / reduced € 4.50

Book Launch: Manuel Gorkiewicz and Stefanie Seufert

Book Launch, Performances, Screenings, Food, Special Cocktail by Maren Lübbke-Tidow

Thursday 24th November, 7 p.m.
Wiensowski & Harbord, Lützowstraße 32, 10785 Berlin

Manuel Gorkiewicz, Therapy  Make-up works  Voluptuous U-turns on the street of Style, Beauty, and Greed, Verlag für moderne Kunst, Wien 2016, Text: Kerstin Cmelka, Christian Egger, Interview: Martin Guttmann with Manuel Gorkiewicz

Stefanie Seufert, Wood Survives in the Form of Postholes, Edition Camera Austria, Graz 2016
Text: Reinhard Braun, Maren Lübbke-Tidow and Stefan Panhans

In the framework of an exhibition with:
Kerstin Cmelka, Christian Egger, Glegg & Guttmann, Manuel Gorkiewicz, Stefan Panhans, Stefanie Seufert

Exhibition: Peter Dressler. Wiener Gold

Kunst Haus Wien, 16. 11. 2016 – 5. 3. 2017

Curators: Rainer Iglar in collaboration with Christine Frisinghelli and Michael Mauracher

With the first retrospective in Vienna, KUNST HAUS WIEN is paying tribute to the work of Peter Dressler, an oeuvre in which the city of Vienna itself plays a central role. As a photographer and film-maker, academy teacher, collector and critical participant in the art scene, Dressler (1942 – 2013) influenced Austrian photography since the 1970s like few other figures. His artistic interest in the photography medium always went hand in hand with a fascination with the history of the medium.

Dressler found the material for his early documentary series and visual narratives in Vienna, where, as he observed, “substance, quality, quite simply the magic of everyday life still exists in large measure”. Later, his “seventies’ realism”, as he called it, was replaced by tableaux and image series and a poetic, filmic approach. The particular charm of Zwischenspiel, a major artist’s book he publishes in 1989, lies in the manifold references and allusions that connect the individual pictures.

Toward the end of the 1980s, his photographic idiom changes again: The artist emerges as the actor and main character in his work, appearing in melancholic, even grotesque narratives that have him preparing „Rather Rare Recipies“ or playing solo tennis in the empty Semper Depot building. With vibrant wit, he inserts himself into found and invented scenarios to bring them to life, teasing out art-historical as well as social implications and highlighting the peculiarities of human behavior. His work is often sublimely funny, but his humor is always energized by a sober awareness of the tragicomic sides of human existence and the subtle possibilities of the photographic medium.

Stay With Me: Artists’ Diaries from Istanbul

Salon für Kunstbuch 21er Haus, Vienna

At a point, as we were just standing there, ‘something’ else began. We were on the streets. Side by side. We didn’t even know each other, but we were side by side. We were there. This was the hope itself. The spirit of solidarity, the challenge, standing side by side…. Then, nothing changed. We clammed up. … Now, we are tired. Is it possible to remember this hope? We have to start somewhere.“ (Selda Asal)

The exhibition “Stay with me” assembles notebooks and journals created by more than 60 artists in the context of experiences they had during the protests at Gezi Park in Istanbul in 2013. In the spring of 2013, protests against urban planning measures for the square occurred at Gezi Park. During the following week, a wave of demonstrations spread over Taksim square and seized the whole country. People organized in a decentralized manner and gathered for more than 5,000 events, around 3.5 million took to the streets. The demonstrations which were suppressed using extraordinary amounts of violence left eleven dead and more than 8,000 injured. Since the summer of 2013, the inner political situation has continued to aggravate. Is it possible to keep the hope of the time alive?

The exhibits on show allow to discern the different approaches open to an art rooted in self-assertion: retaining the magic of shared moments, capturing the menace on paper, projecting oneself to a different place, remembering experiences through abstraction.

“Stay with me” was initiated by artist Selda Asal, a visual artist, born in Izmir. Studies in Musicology and Art. She initiated the “Apartment Project” in Istanbul and is currently living in Istanbul and Berlin.

With contributions by: Ali Miharbi, Anti-Pop, Aslı Çavuşoğlu, Ata kam, Ayşe Küçük, Azra Deniz Okyay, Balca Ergener & Meltem Ahıska, Berkay Tuncay, Burçak Bingöl, Carla Mercedes Hihn, Ceren Oykut, Christine Kriegerowski, Çiğdem Hasanoğlu, Devrim Ck, Devrim Kadirbeyoğlu, Didem Erk, Eda Gecikmez, Ekin Saçlıoğlu, Elif Çelebi, Elmas Deniz, Endam Acar & Fırat Bingöl, Erdağ Aksel, Erhan Öze, Erdem Helvacıoğlu, Eser Selen, Fatma Belkıs, Fatma Çiftçi, Ferhat Özgür, Figen Aydıntaşbaş, Fulya Çetin, Genco Gülan, Gonca Sezer, Gökçe Süvari, Gökhan Deniz, Göksu Kunak, Gülçin Aksoy, Gül Kozacıoğlu, Gümüş Özdeş, Güneş Savaş & Eren Yemez, Güneş Terkol, Gözde İlkin, Hale Tenger, Hubert Sommerauer, İnci Furni, İpek Duben, Kınay Olcaytu, Melike Kılıç, Merve Çanakçı, Merve Şendil, Mischa Rescka, Murat Tosyalı, Nalan Yırtmaç, Nancy Atakan, Nazım Dikbaş, Neriman Polat, Nick Flood, Nurcan Gündoğan, Onur Ceritoğlu, Onur Gökmen, Özgür Atlagan & Bengi Güldoğan, Özgür Demirci, Özgür Erkök Moroder, Özge Enginöz, Rüçhan Şahinoğlu, Raziye Kubat, Sabine Küpher Büsch & Thomas Büsch, Seda Hepsev, Seçil Yersel, Sena Başöz, Senem Denli, Sevim Sancaktar, Sevil Tunaboylu, Sevgi Ortaç, Suat Öğüt, Sümer Sayın, Şafak Çatalbaş, Ulufer Çelik, Yaprak Kırdök, Yasemin Özcan, Yasemin Nur, Yavuz Parlar, Yeşim Ağaoğlu, Zeyno Pekünlü

David Maljković: Again and Again

Curated by Bojana Piškur and What, How & for Whom/WHW

Opening: 25 October 2016 at 8 p.m., Moderna Galerija / Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana

Taking place a year after A Retrospective by Appointment in Zagreb, Again and Again offers a new take on the genre of retrospective exhibition, tracing narratives and methods that occur in David Maljković’s work. While the Zagreb retrospective opened a subtle dialogue with the Zagreb institutional landscape, the atmosphere of its sociability and rhythms of cultural life through engaging with small-scale institutions, Again and Again looks into the approaches and obsessions recurring in David’s works that offer various points of entry to the institutional and social history of Moderna galerija / the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana and the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova.

Again and Again brings together a range of works, as well as elements of installations from different stages of Maljković’s career, along the way deconstructing the genre of a “mid-career” retrospective by taking a nonhierarchical approach to all the works and objects, putting them side by side on seemingly inadequate, unlikely structures taken from the Museum’s storage areas. Defying expectations and taking a humorous approach to the retrospective format itself, Again and Again problematizes its own relation to the context and infrastructure by reusing and repurposing elements of previous exhibitions’ furniture and displays, thus probing institutional protocols and history.

Key concerns and methods of David Maljković’s work – individual and collective relationships towards the complexities of time, a collagist approach, self-referentiality, referencing the work of other artists, the use of his earlier works and exhibition displays as material, inquiry into the notion of art’s autonomy, exploring the nature of the gaze, carefully choreographing the exhibition experience – are all visible within the exhibition. Throughout his practice, David Maljković creates a web of relations that evoke the various metamorphoses of his work, calling attention to their formal aspects, as well as the circumstances of their production. The architectural reconfigurations of the space, as well as various exhibition constructions taken from the Museum’s storage areas, become elements in David’s method that works with the tensions between the procedures of exhibition display, which draw the viewers into the exhibition narrative, and those that are aimed at creating the estrangement effect. The rhythm and heightened physical presence of the exhibition elements that could equally be called exhibition architecture, scenography, or sculpture, direct the ways of looking and contextualize the individual works within a “choreographed” experience.

Again and Again is organized around subtle clues for tracing and reconstructing fragments, transformations, metamorphoses and references, but humor and a playful nonchalance allow for the “here and now” of the exhibition as an aesthetic and social experience that aims to see what is the core of contemporary art once the forms are disrespected and disrespectful, and how this could open the possibility to radically reimagine both exhibition practice and the future of cultural institutions.

David Maljković, born in Rijeka, Croatia in 1973, lives and works in Zagreb. His recent solo exhibitions include: The Exhibition is Becoming, VOX Centre de l’image contemporaine, Montreal (2016), In Low Resolution, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2014), Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, St. Gallen (2014), Sources in the Air, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2013), Sources in the Air, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2012), Exhibitions for Secession, Wiener Secession, Vienna (2011), Out of Projection, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2009). Maljković has participated in group shows such as: The Eighth Climate (What Does Art Do?), 11th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (2016), Scenes for a New Heritage: Contemporary Art from the Collection, Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA (2015), All The World’s Futures, 56th Biennale di Venezia, Venice (2015), Animism, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2012), The Present and Presence, Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Ljubljana (2011), 29th São Paulo Art Biennial, São Paulo (2010), What Keeps Mankind Alive, 11th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul (2009), When Things Cast No Shadow, 5th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2008).

Maribor Art Gallery: Lectures by Nestan Nijaradze and Klavdij Sluban

UGM, Maribor Art Gallery, Strossmayerjeva ulica 6, Maribor, Slovenia

Nestan Nijaradze / Contemporary Photography from the Caucasus

Saturday, 22 October 2016, at 18:00

Nestan Nijaradze will present contemporary photography from the Caucasus area and the Tbilisi Photo Festival, which was established in 2010 with Nestan as its artistic director from the very beginning. The Tbilisi Photo Festival has already achieved extreme public visibility, and it isn’t only the region’s most important photo event – it is also the most important cultural event in the Caucasus. From the very beginning it has been supported by partners such as the prestigious Photo Festival in Arles. This year the Festival in Tbilisi hosted more than 200 photographers from 20 different countries. The main event of the festival is the Photography Night, which includes numerous outdoor projections and has had more than 10,000 visitors. The main aims of the festival are to create a meeting point for photography from different areas (Asia, Iran, Turkey, Europe, Russia and Saudi Arabia), to introduce the best in the field of world photography, and to promote young local photographers.

Nestan Nijaradze (b. 1971) is the co-founder and artistic director of TBILISI PHOTO FESTIVAL in Georgia, an internationally recognized curator of photography exhibitions, a writer, a TV broadcast host on Georgian national television, an expert in portfolio evaluations at various prestigious festivals, and a promoter of Georgian photography. Between 2007 and 2015, she worked as the director of the House of Photography; between 2007 and 2009, she worked as the main director of PHOTO Magazine; in 2007 she introduced the first permanent collection of Georgian photography; between 2008 and 2009, she coordinated a project for the MAGNUM agency in Georgia. She has a degree in visual art studies from the University of Tbilisi in Georgia, and a master’s degree from the University of Paris-Diderot in Paris. In Georgia, she has represented various Western photographers from numerous institutions (Robert Capa, Stanley Greene, Guiorgui Pinkhassov, Vanessa Winship, etc.), and she regularly promotes Georgian photography (Natela Grigalshvili, Newsha Tavakolian, Guram Tsibakhashvili, Shalva Alkhanaidze) during various world festivals.

The lecture will be held in English and will not be translated.

 

Klavdij Sluban / Presenting the Author’s Photographic Work
Saturday, 22 October 2016, at 19:00

Klavdij Sluban will present his new projects, including his “silent videos” from Japan. At the beginning of this year he dedicated this project to Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694), who is known as one of the greatest experts in haiku poetry. Klavdij walked the Bash route, a 500 km journey on foot from Kyoto to Tokyo, and was able to immerse himself in Japan’s culture and countryside. He received an award for photography from the Academy of Fine Art for an intimate and poetic series called “Divagation – sur les pas de Bashō”.

For the first time he will also present his photgraphs from the juvenile detention centers, Mario Covas in Arujà in San Paulo, Brazil and from the Fleury-Mérogis Center in France. Between 1995 and 2000 he held photography workshops and also invited other well-known photographers, such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Marc Riboud and William Klein to collaborate with him. The point of Sluban’s prison photography is not reportage. He focuses on the limitations of time and habitat, defined by the limits of a prison.

Klavdij Sluban (b. 1963) is a French photographer with Slovenian roots. He gained public and critical acclaim with his completely personal approach to photography. His works are seen all over the world in museums and galleries. Since 1995 he has been active in workshops for young prisoners. He has received important international photography awards, such as the European Publishers Award for Photography (EPAP, 2009), the Niepece Award (2000), which is the most important French award for photography, and the Leica Award (2004). One of the awards most dear to him is his Deklica s piščalko award from Kočevje, where he spent his childhood.

The lecture will be held in Slovene.

No entrance fee.