September 09, 2013

Interruption: 30th Biennial of Graphic Arts Ljubljana

Interruption is the 30th edition of the Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts, structured as a complex mix of representation and discourse, which is the outcome and sum of the concepts, content and social networks created by the Biennial's almost 60-year-old tradition. Today The Biennial of Graphic Arts Ljubljana is seen as one of the print biennials that has most radically expanded the borders of the medium and redefined the concept of the fine art print and printmaking. It has gradually shifted its understanding of the autonomous nature of the print from a strictly technical definition to, primarily, the communicative potential of the graphic medium. The curator of the Biennial main exhibition, Deborah Cullen, has selected 42 artists among which some return to basic, even primal, forms of image reproduction, while others embrace the random, fractured and endless virtual world.
Interruption explores the graphic as both form and content, in an invigorated terrain that, looking both backward and forward, links the work of diverse contemporary artists from around the world. Printerly processes touch many types of present-day art. Select, traditional media have evolved and adapted to maintain their relevance, while digital processes, after a long fermentation, have finally taken legitimate hold as artistic tools in their own right. Interruption surveys the extension of traditional as well as new approaches to printmaking in response to our 21st-century communications.

Curator: Deborah Cullen

Participating artists:
Allora & Calzadilla, Burak Arıkan, Dennis Ashbaugh & William Ford Gibson, Tammam Azzam, Xu Bing, Luis Camnitzer, caraballo-farman, Alex Cerveny, Mario Čaušić, Vuk Ćosić, Milos Djordjevic, Tomás Espina, Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze Gianluigi Scarpa, Mihael Giba, Ana Golici, María Elena González, Meta Grgurevič and Urša Vidic, Dragan IIic, Sanela Jahić, Charles Juhász-Alvarado, Thomas Kilpper, André Komatsu, Gorazd Krnc, Volodymyr Kuznetsov, Nicola López, Ivan Marušić Klif, Yucef Merhi, Ottjörg A.C., Renata Papišta, Adam Pendleton, Agnieszka Polska, Zoran Poposki, Marjetica Potrč, Gerhard Richter, Venelin Shurelov, Dario Šolman, Nika Špan, Teo Spiller, Waltraut Tänzler, Rirkrit Tiravanija,Vargas-Suarez Universal and Tomas Vu-Daniel.

September 05, 2013

Biennial of Graphic Arts Ljubljana


14 September–24 November 2013
Pre-opening day: Friday 13 September
Opening: Friday 13 September, 7pm, in front of the International Centre of Graphic Arts
Mednarodni grafični likovni center / International Centre of Graphic Arts
Grad Tivoli, Pod turnom 3,
1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia 
T +386 (0)1 241 38 00
F +386 (0)1 241 38 21
info@mglc-lj.si
www.mglc-lj.si

Interruption is the 30th edition of the Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts. This installation considers the evolutionary graphic field of contemporary times. Printerly processes touch many types of present-day art. Select, traditional media have evolved and adapted to maintain their relevance, while digital processes, after a long fermentation, have finally taken legitimate hold as artistic tools in their own right.Interruption surveys the extension of traditional as well as new approaches to printmaking in response to our 21st-century communications.

The curator of the 30th Biennial of Graphic Arts in Ljubljana is Deborah Cullen, Director and chief curator of the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University in New York.

Participating artists: 
Allora & Calzadilla, Burak Arıkan, Dennis Ashbaugh & William Ford Gibson, Tammam Azzam, Xu Bing, Luis Camnitzer, caraballo-farman, Alex Cerveny, Mario Čaušić, Vuk Ćosić, Milos Djordjevic, Tomás Espina, Giorgi Gago Gagoshidze Gianluigi Scarpa, Mihael Giba, Ana Golici, María Elena González, Meta Grgurevič and Urša Vidic, Dragan IIic, Sanela Jahić, Charles Juhász-Alvarado, Thomas Kilpper, André Komatsu, Gorazd Krnc, Volodymyr Kuznetsov, Nicola López, Ivan Marušić Klif, Yucef Merhi, Ottjörg A.C., Renata Papišta, Adam Pendleton, Agnieszka Polska, Zoran Poposki, Marjetica Potrč, Gerhard Richter, Venelin Shurelov, Dario Šolman, Nika Špan, Teo Spiller, Waltraut Tänzler, Rirkrit Tiravanija,Vargas-Suarez Universal and Tomas Vu-Daniel.

The works included in the Biennial echo and comment on the conditions of the world in which we live: how we receive our information, how we interact—or attempt to—with each other, how we (mis)perceive our world. Clamouring, unfiltered data bombards us. Masquerading commercial and political agendas vie for our attention alongside personal thoughts and images that are more than we can ever possibly absorb. The hyperactivity of text and image begs for our attention. While some artists respond by returning to basic, even primal, forms of image reproduction (fire, shadows, tattoos, gunshots), others embrace the randomness of social media picture boards, the ghostliness of heat-sensitive live-feed video, endless streams of leaked governmental documents, or the brief haikus of the Twittersphere.

Interruption considers both the fresh application of traditional means by leading-edge artists and the innovative incorporation of new printerly technologies in fine-art investigations. Both approaches contemplate our contemporary transmissions as the basis of their works. Interruption explores the graphic as both form and content, in an invigorated polygraphic terrain that links the work of diverse contemporary artists from around the world. 

The following exhibitions are also part of the 30th Biennial of Graphic Arts:

Exhibition of the history of the Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts:
The Biennial of Graphic Arts – Serving You Since 1955 
The exhibition features archival television footage, personal testimonies and memoirs, letters and other documents that reveal the Biennial’s journey through nearly six decades, with a focus on selected aspects from past exhibitions. Curated by Petja Grafenauer.

Exhibition of the Grand Prize Winner of the 29th Biennial of Graphic Arts:
Regina José Galindo: The Anatomy Lesson 
The Guatemalan artist Regina José Galindo works in the field of performance, often responding in her art to current socio-political situations, as we saw presented at the 29th Biennial of Graphic Arts. This year’s retrospective exhibition takes us on a journey through the poetics of the artist’s oeuvre. Curated by Yasmín Martín Vodopivec. 

Exhibition of the Honorable Mention of the 29th Biennial of Graphic Arts:
Miklós Erdély: The Original and the Copy + Indigo Drawings 
Miklós Erdély (1928–1986)—artist, architect, writer, poet, and filmmaker—was a major figure in the neo-avant-garde and conceptual art of Hungary. The exhibition of Erdély’s photographic works, indigo works and drawings has been organised with the co-operation of the Miklós Erdély Foundation (EMA). Curated by Annamária Szőke.

Venues of the 30th Biennial of Graphic Arts: The International Centre of Graphic Arts (MGLC), The Museum of Modern Art plus the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova (MG+MSUM), The Cankarjev Dom Gallery, The Jakopič Gallery – The Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana (MGML)            

The 30th Biennial of Graphic Arts is on view from 14 September to 24 November 2013, Tuesday–Sunday 10am–6pm.

In conjunction with the 30th Biennial of Graphic Arts there will be a one-day international conference: “Password: Printmaking” (18 October, Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana).

September 04, 2013

Translation(s) in Denmark and Canada

After its premiere at the Hong Kong ArtWalk Extra this spring and the ART STAYS International Festival of Contemporary Art in Slovenia this summer, the international video project Translation(s) curated by Laurence Wood and Zoran Poposki will be screened in the programme of the 5th edition of NotFestival in Copenhagen, Denmark, from from September 16-21, 2013, at The Danish National School of Performing Arts (Statens Scenekunstskole).
Photo courtesy: NotFestival2013
"The Not Festival is a kaleidoscopic, ephemeral, erratic and nomadic artistic object. It embraces the ideas of global artistic collaboration and the cross-cultural, interdisciplinary, DIY attitudes.Through the use of old and new artistic approaches, technologies and media it exists outside the realm of the establishment, which implies generally non-existing financial support. However, its inclusive nature allows it to move inside and outside of institutions and at the same time avoid the institutional restrictions. This political “object” aims to fight the standardized and systematized commodification of the arts. Thus, it is NOT a FESTIVAL."

Featuring works by Arnold J. Kemp, Tricia Sellmer, Lucy Harrison, Daniel Arnaldo-Roman, Zoran Poposki, Laurence Wood, Luis Lara Malvacias, Tessie Word and Damon Ayers, Victoria Hindley, and Eva Petric, Translation(s) consider the centerless chronotope of global negotiation and interchange between agents from different cultures as an emerging network of new pathways of translation between multiple formats of expression and communication. Through a variety of approaches to video, the artists featured in this project explore the dynamic interplay between the global and the local on a concrete, material level.

The Danish National School of Performing Arts (Statens Scenekunstskole) is the main educational institution in Denmark within the fields of acting, dance, choreography, scenography, light and sound design, musical accompaniment for dance, dance partnership, production and stage management and props design.
Photo courtesy: Chazou Gallery
Simultaneously with the Copenhagen festival, Translation(s) will also be on show at the Chazou Gallery in Kamloops, BC, Canada, from September 18 to October 18, 2013.