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  • 2014/09 - 2015/01 Society Acts: The Moderna Exhibition 2014, Moderna Museet Malmö

    Chamber Of Freedom With Integrated Memory Hole, installation 2011

     

    http://www.modernamuseet.se/en/Malmo/Exhibitions/2014/The-Moderna-Exibition-2014/

    Twice before, in 2006 and 2010, Moderna Museet’s inventory of Swedish contemporary art, the Moderna Exhibition, has been shown at the Museum in Stockholm.

    In autumn 2014, the third edition of the Moderna Exhibition will be presented at Moderna Museet Malmö. Unlike the two previous exhibitions, the selection has been widened geographically beyond Sweden, to include artists from a large part of the Baltic region.  The exhibition features 38 contemporary artists and artist groups from, or based in, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. A few historical elements will also be included. The widened geographical scope coincides with the 100th anniversary of the Baltic Exhibition in Malmö in 1914.

    The title refers both to “acts” as in actions and to the verb to act. Several of the featured artists and works discuss or engage in performative practices where the distance between viewing and interacting is essential, and where issues of private and collective identities, political expressions and personal reflections are materialised. Language and migration, the boundary between private and public, and between fact and fiction, are other subjects that occur frequently in the exhibition.

    A rich programme of performances, lectures and film screenings is planned in conjunction with the exhibition. All the featured artists will also be presented in an extensive catalogue.

    Participating artists:
    AaBbPp, Patrik Aarnivaara, Emanuel Almborg, Cezary Bodzianowski, Maja Borg, Eglė Budvytytė & Bart Groenendaal, Zenta Dzividzinska, Ugnius Gelguda & Neringa Černiauskaitė, Johanna Gustafsson Fürst, Joachim Hamou, Maj Hasager, Łukasz Jastrubczak, Laura Kaminskaitė, Tadeusz Kantor, Essi Kausalainen, Agnieszka Kurant, Anna Lundh, Henning Lundkvist, Maija Luutonen, Björn Lövin, J.O. Mallander, Jonas Mekas, Miks Mitrēvics & Kristīne Kursiša, Kristina Norman, Michala Paludan, Lea Porsager, Emily Roysdon, Imri Sandström, Algirdas Šeškus, Janek Simon, Ola Ståhl & Terje Östling, Mika Taanila, Anna-Stina Treumund & Marju Mutsu, Ola Vasiljeva, Visible Solutions LLC, Tris Vonna-Michell, Mette Winckelmann.

    Curator: Andreas Nilsson
    Co-curator: Maija Rudovska
    Assistant curator: Julia Björnberg

  • 2014/09 - Survival Kit 6, International Contemporary Arts Festival, Riga, Latvia

    Product Presentation Performance at the Survival Kit 6 Festival.
    Visible Solutions LLC’s Product Presentation Performance at the Survival Kit 6 Festival


    http://www.survivalkit.lv/en/

    For the sixth year now, the Survival Kit International Contemporary Art Festival will be taking place in Rīga. The festival runs from 4th to the 27th September, and this year forms part of the Rīga 2014 European Capital of Culture programme. More than seventy participants from twenty five countries are taking part in the festival, with the Utopian City, as this year’s theme. 

    ‘Survival Kit’ is an annual contemporary art festival that has been organised by the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art since 2009, when it began as a reaction to the global economic crisis which forced the public to find new survival strategies and encouraged artists to discover new ways of existing. Solvita Krese, curator of the Survival Kit 6 Festival comments on this year’s theme, Utopian City, as follows: “Looking back at the history of utopian ideas, we end up in the relatively recent past. There we can find surprising modernist visions, the splendour and failure of the dominating ideology, and searches for alternative living spaces and awareness of places through the framework of various subcultures.” The co-curator of the Festival is Aneta Szylak, Director of the Alternativa Festival in Poland. For the first time, the festival will also be taking place in Umea, where it is being organised by Verkligheten, Bildmuseet, Vita Kuben and Umeå Academy of Fine Art.

    The festival’s strategy each year, has been to highlight an area in Rīga where there are empty buildings, linking this with the city’s development and urban planning trends and problems, and providing alternative scenarios. Rīga is one of the rare European capital cities which lack such institutions as a contemporary art museum and a concert hall, and is the reason why two different buildings have been purposefully selected for the festival event this year to highlight this problem. The two venues are –Vāgnera Hall and the former Boļševička Textile Factory which is being considered as a possible site for the contemporary art museum.

    Survival Kit is the most noticeable and internationally best-known contemporary art festival in Latvia. Each year, the Festival attracts and involves up to 15,000 visitors. Previously the festival has represented works by such artists as Oliver Ressler (Austria), Harun Farocki (Germany), The Yes Men (USA), Gabriel Lester (Netherlands) and other internationally well-known authors. “Survival Kit” is produced by the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, which aims to provide continuity of contemporary art processes and their integration into the international circuit. The centre is one of the most active art institutions in Latvia, and an internationally recognized cooperation partner.

    This year’s festival graphic identity is designed by Monika Grūzīte.

  • 2014/04 Köler Prize 2014, Exhibition of Nominees, Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia
    A Work Commissioned from a Painter Tõnis Saadoja by Visible Solutions LLC

    A Work Commissioned from the Painter Tõnis Saadoja by Visible Solutions LLC, oil on canvas 2014

     

    http://www.ekkm.ee/naitused/koler-prize-2014-nominentide-naitus/

    The Köler Prize is an art prize that was founded by the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM) in 2011. Every year, five artists or art groups of Estonian descent or permanently residing in Estonia are nominated based on their work during the last three years. The nominees for the 2013 Köler Prize are Jass Kaselaan, Kiwa, Kärt Ojavee, Johannes Säre and Visible Solutions LLC.

    The artists submit two works of their own choosing to the exhibition. One work that has been exhibited previously, preferably produced during the last three years, which could be considered to be a work that defines the artist’s practice. The other should be a new work that is produced especially for the Köler Prize or one that has not been previously exhibited in Estonia. An international panel of judges will choose the winner of the Köler Prize based on the works in the exhibition and the artist’s portfolio. Members of the Köler Prize 2014 jury are: Jaanus Samma, Estonian artist and the winner of Köler Prize 2013; René Block, German gallerist and curator, currently the director of Kunstall Moen44 in Denmark; Taru Elvfing, director of the FRAME Foundation in Helsinki and the curator of Finnish Pavillion at the Venice biennale in 2015; Mari Laanemets, Estonian art historian and curator and Magda Kardasz, Polish curator working at the Zacheta gallery in Warssaw. The public will also have the opportunity to choose its favorite at the exhibition. Thus, the main award and the people’s choice award will be announced at the gala to take place on May 30th. Thereafter, the exhibition will remain open for few more weeks.

    The exhibition is accompanied by the catalogue (edited by Andreas Trossek and designed by Indrek Sirkel) and documentary about the nominated artists (film is done by Anders Härm, Reimo Võsa Tangsoo, Raul Tõnurist and Jevgeni Berežovski)

    There are many art prizes in Estonia that are awarded on the basis of annual output, such as the Cultural Endowment awards. There are also many that are directed at young artists as well as those for an artist’s life’s work. There are national cultural awards, including ones for art. The Köler Prize is intended for active artists without imposing any age limits. The nominees are artists that have demonstrated stability for a long period; who have shown that they have coherently and definitively pursued a specific line of practice. They are not “one hit wonders” or true classics either. They have unrealized or partially realized international potential and they are currently doing significant things in the Estonian art world.

    There are several awards in Estonia that have been named after art classics. In addition to the fact that Köler rhymes with Turner, we were motivated to name the award after Köler in order to have our award “predate” the other awards and to virtually place Köler Prize before the Kristjan Raud Prize, Konrad Mägi Medal, and Eduard Viiralt Prize. The link to the 19th-century Estonian painter Johann Köler is mostly limited to this. In the local context, the Köler Prize is special because the prize is accompanied by a nominees’ exhibition and it is awarded based largely on a successful presentation at this exhibition. Like last two year, the Köler Prize is again sponsored by Smarten Logistics. People’s Choice Award is sponsored by SALTO architects.

    This year is the fourth time that the Köler Prize will be awarded. In 2011, the Grand Prix was won by Jevgeni Zolotko and Tõnis Saadoja won the Public’s Choice Award. In 2013 Flo Kasearu won both the Grand Prix and People`s Choice Award. Indeed, Marge Monko`s ouevre was also considered worthy of honorary mentioning by the jury. Last year Jaanus Samma won also both the Grand Prix and the People’s Choice Award

    Press release prepared by
    Anders Härm
    Member of the Board of EKKM

    More information
    Tel: +372 50 84 570
    e-mail: anders@ekkm.ee
    www.ekkm.ee

  • 2014/02 Exodic, metamatic:taf, Athens
    Exhibition view

    Exhibition view, courtesy of Tatiana May Kallergi, Angeliki Roussou

    http://theartfoundation.metamatic.gr/EN/Event/2259/Exodic/

    Exodus and the exotic / the transformative modalities of exoticism

    metamatic:taf is excited to host the exhibition Exodic, which opens on Thursday 6 February at 20.30 and will run until 2 March 2014.

    Exodic attempts to bring together two seemingly distant notions, exodus, as defined by Paolo Virno, and the exotic. The exhibition provides an experimental conceptual ground for the two notions to be presented and discussed in light of current developments on a local and international basis. The notion of the exotic is perceived as a potential mode of relating to something foreign. Specifically, the exhibition addresses the mythologising and flirtatious aspects in exoticising what derives from an unfamiliar outside. Defining exodus, Virno rejects the political resistance that comes from an alleged sphere outside the existing social structures and he suggests a turn to exogenous parameters that can give birth to a new arrangement.

    “Exodus is the transfer to political praxis of the heuristic procedure, [. . .] which the mathematicians define as ‘variation of data’: giving precedence to secondary or heterogeneous factors, we move gradually from a determined problem: subjection or insurrection, to a totally different problem: how to realize a defection and to experience forms of self-government which were previously inconceivable” (P.Virno, Jokes and Innovative Action, 2008)*

    The relationship between the two discussed notions can be found in a web of conceptual threads. Exodus itself might seem exotic in the sense that it is an unfamiliar process of exiting certain comfort zones. Exodus also seems to be realisable on a grassroots level which makes it something rare in its nature. Thus, exodus can fall prey to mythologising and stereotyping forces in the same sense that something exotic does. Departing from the theoretical concept of exodus without seeking visualisations of it, the exhibition deals with the notion of the exotic as a mode of relating to “heterogeneous factors”. In doing so, it does not adopt an escapist attitude; it wonders about the transformative modalities of exoticism.

    The international group of participating artists is effectively situated on the grey zone of what is taken to be western or non-western, northern or southern and exotic or non-exotic. Each one of the works relates to the subject on a different level and all the works together initiate unexpected dialogues, open to interpretation by the viewer. The show is staged in a subtly cinematic approach that plays with the stereotypical exotic imagery and its re-appropriation through the internet and new media. As this oxymoron of reducing to familiar forms (stereotypes or myths) unfamiliar images (the exotic) is widespread in the show, humour is also employed as a device to experiment with the implicated meanings and forms.

    The prefix exo- (outside) resides within the words exotic and exodus

    *Paolo Virno, Jokes and Innovative Action (Los Angeles/New York: Semiotext(e), 2008

    Participating artists: Konstantinos Kotsis, Lucky PDF, Sotiris Bakagiannis, Paul Souviron, Superflex and Jens Haaning, Maria Tzanakou, Petros Touloudis, Visible Solutions LLC

    Curated by: Tatiana May Kallergi, Angeliki Roussou

  • 2013/09 Liquid Assets, steirischer herbst festival, Graz, Austria

    http://www.steirischerherbst.at/2013/english/calendar/calendar.php?eid=17

    Things clear up in retrospect, they say. What was eclipsed by the gravity of events becomes visible later: causes, reasons, connections, culprits. But is that really so? Today, for example, five years after the outbreak of the biggest post-war financial and economic crisis, have we really learned anything? Have we understood the pathologies that can be unleashed by an alliance of democracy and market economy that we learned to see as part of the natural order and without alternative after the fall of the Wall? Have we really understood the financial turn, with all its consequences, its devastating effects for the global economy, but also for democracy and human rights, that dramatic shift from real to finance industry, in which assets, concrete and abstract alike, are created and destroyed in fractions of a second? Do we know how to get out of it again?
    But then why is no end of the calamity in sight? Why don’t we even draw clear conclusions from the sheer violence that goes hand in hand with finance capitalism? And why – despite all the experts constantly explaining the world to us in talk-shows and at round-table conferences – do we seem to lack words when we try to put what is happening to us in a nutshell?
    The international exhibition “Liquid Assets” focuses on these mysteries, the ineffable and the obscure, the opacities and the shady sides of an economic and financial system that no longer can explain itself. In order to explore the secrets and logics of free-flowing global cash flows with the devices of art, in order perhaps to understand a bit better how money and debt morality can define and deform interpersonal relationships.

    The catalogue “Liquid Assets” (Mousse Publishing) with texts by Katerina Gregos, Luigi Fassi & Christian Marazzi and contributions by all participating artists, will be published on September 20.

    WithAlessandro Balteo Yazbeck (DE/VE) & Media Farzin (US/IR), Eric Baudelaire (FR/US), James Beckett (NL/ZA), Alain Bornain (BE), Danilo Correale (IT), Marianne Flotron (NL/CH), Zachary Formwalt (NL/US), Alexandros Georgiou (GR), Goldin+Senneby (SE), Núria Güell (ES), Jan Peter Hammer (DE), David Harvey (US/GB), Kennedy Browne (IE), Gustav Metzger (GB/DE), Anetta Mona Chisa (RO) & Lucia Tkacova (SK), Oliver Ressler (AT), Salinas & Bergman (US/NO), Visible Solutions (EE), Wooloo (DK)

    Curated by Luigi Fassi (AT/IT) & Katerina Gregos (BE/GR)

    Commissioned by steirischer herbst
    With support of Danish Arts Council, Estonian Ministry of Culture, Estonian Cultural Endowment, mondriaan fund, Office for Contemporary Art Norway & Pro Helvetia, Schweizer Kulturstiftung
    Project sponsor hs art service austria

  • 2013/02 The Ad Campaign, 1 of May pop-up Gallery, Tallinn, Estonia
  • 2012/10 Archaeology and the Future of Estonian Art Scenes, KUMU Art Museum
  • 2012/06 Visible Solutions LLC Trading Post, Manifesta 9, Genk, Belgium

    http://manifesta9.org/

    Successful Manifesta 9 closes its doors after four months and 100,866 visits

    On Sunday, 30th of September, 2012 Manifesta 9 closed its doors in Genk, Limburg, Belgium. The team of Manifesta look back to a successful 9th edition of the European Biennial of Contemporary Art, an edition that was met with much critical acclaim, and saw 100,866 visits to the exhibition. For the first time Manifesta took place in one single venue, the now defunct mine of Waterschei in Genk, in the heart of the former coal-mining region of Belgian Limburg.

    “I am proud to be able to announce that Manifesta, as a roving biennial has once more been able to surpass expectations. Our team rose to the challenge to engage an incredibly diverse range of participants and audiences in a project which proved to be both deeply embedded in the vernacular of it’s locality, but also had it’s finger on the global pulse of the times.” Hedwig Fijen, Director Manifesta

    The artistic team of Manifesta 9 was lead by Cuauhtémoc Medina (Mexico), who together with associate curators Katerina Gregos (Greece/Belgium) and Dawn Ades (UK) developed the content of the exhibition. The artistic team worked in unison with a larger group, composed of regional, national and international talent responsible for the management, education, production, communication, grants and office of Manifesta 9. Last but not least, such a major project could not have been possible without the help of 260 dedicated volunteers.

    Manifesta 9 – The Deep of the Modern was presented as a triptych. For the first section, 35 international contemporary artists were invited to create new work, paying heed to the regional context and linking the local theme with global issues. The art historical section provided an overview of works of art from the 19th and 20th centuries, with the impact of the coal industry as their subject. The third section focused on the extensive legacy that the Limburg mining industry has left behind.

    One of the fundamental characteristics of Manifesta 9 was a critical attempt to foster an interdisciplinary and intergenerational dialogue using the significance of the former Campine Belgian coal-mining region as a locus of the imaginary, and the ecology of industrial capitalism as its points of departure. As such, Art Mediation played a more important role than ever in the success of the Biennial: the public response to Manifesta’s invitation for such a dialogue has been overwhelming. To date over 37.000 people have participated in the programs organized by the Manifesta 9 Art Mediation / Art Education department, that is one out of every three people that visited Manifesta 9.

    An incredibly diverse range of audiences also visited Manifesta 9: from general visitors to art professionals, from primary schools to universities and from international visitors to the local community. Many groups from all over the world found their way to Limburg, and the local community in particular, was enthralled by the exhibition as is underlined by the fact that 20% of the inhabitants of Genk visited the biennial.

    The comprehensive bilingual (English/Dutch) Manifesta 9 catalog, a Subcyclopedia, with contributions by the curators and initiators is available for purchase at www.silvanaeditoriale.it and for the first time in the history of Manifesta, the exhibition was also accompanied by a constantly expanding digital catalogue, containing essays, concepts, videos, pictures and in depth information about the Manifesta 9 artists and artworks. http://catalog.manifesta9.org

    An extensive Parallel Events program accompanied the biennial, comprised of 98 projects, which spread over Limburg and further over the borders with The Netherlands and Germany. This program initiated by Manifesta 9, together with the Region of Limburg offered a much appreciated platform aimed to present a broader view of different aspects of the local cultural scene to the regional, national and International audience.

    Manifesta 9 was initiated and produced by the Manifesta Foundation, the Province of Limburg and the City of Genk, and was generously support of over 65 private and public organizations.

    To keep updated about all Manifesta activities, please subscribe to our regular e-mail newsletter at www.manifesta.org

  • 2012/01 Opening of the office at B-Gallery, Turku, Finland
  • 2011/11 The ad campaign at Monumental Gallery, Tartu, Estonia
  • 2011/06 Museum Files I: Collected Principles, Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia

    http://www.ekkm.ee/en/naitused/museum-files-i-collected-principles/

     
    MUSEUM FILES I: COLLECTED PRINCIPLES
    June 19 – July 17, 2011

     

    Opening Reception on Saturday, June 18th at 6 pm

     

    The collection of EKKM, which, like every living collection, is continually supplemented is however not an ordinary public or private collection, for both conceptual reasons related to the institutional practices of EKKM and purely material reasons related to the lack of money. Firstly, EKKM has never had any budget for collecting and EKKM also has relatively little depository space for storing the collection, not to mention the proper conditions for preservation. Yet, we didn`t want to get the artists’ works for free or to engage in blackmail like the Soviet-era “art beggars”. Therefore, EKKM collects primarily, but not exclusively, intangibly — at the idea level. The collection is a conceptual set of works, ideas and matter, the majority of which is acquired through symbolic exchanges if not the artists have decided to donate the works. In many cases, the artists have been paid with resources that are detached from ordinary economic activities by using a barter system, or by using agreement that are reached for acquiring the works of art in some other way.

    The acquisition of works can be roughly divided into the following three groups:

    a) through a conceptual transaction between the artist and institution;’
    b) strategic commissions by the institution;
    c) donations and deposits.

     

    The exhibition titled /Collected Principles/, during which the works collected during EKKM’s first four years of operation will be exhibited for the first time, will try to demonstrate the manner of acquisition along with the works of art. By making the movement of symbolic conceptual capital between the institution and artist visible, the connections and relationships that are usually hidden from the public will also become visible. At the same time, the act of acquiring a work of art can also be interpreted as an artistic act — an institution’s “answer” to the artist; as a meta-artistic interpretation which now and hereafter will be an indivisible part of the work of art.

     

    press release was compiled by
    Anders Härm
    EKKM Board

    more info:
    tel: +372 50 84 570
    e-mail: anders@kunstihoone.ee

  • 2011/05 Residency in Kumu Art Museum

    http://www.kunstimuuseum.ee/et/pressile/pressiteated/pressiteadete-arhiiv/971-kumu-residentkunstnike-programm-esitleb-visible-solutions

     

  • 2010/09 Annex 6. The Politics of the Invisible Hand, ART ISTKUKU NU UT, Y-Gallery, Tartu
  • 2010/07 Opening of the office at the exhibition “Take Care”, Cesis, Latvia
  • 2010/04 Opening of the office, Hobusepea Gallery, Tallinn, Estonia