editorial

Arts in the Crossroad: Money or Revolution

Dr. Kubilay Akman

Every professional from the sectors such as finance, industry, fine arts, Etc. and citizens of all nations are talking about such a big “crisis” threatens “us”. Thanks to global economical processes, crisis of America has become a “universal” crisis almost threatening other galaxies too, as if they are also inside a “free market” and the domiciled ones are using money like our societies. more...

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Are We Placing A Narrow Frame Around Photography’s First Century?

Victoria Z. Alexander

Those interested in the history of photography who managed to be in New York this past summer were treated to an exhibition of magnificent images taken by thirteen photographic “stars” from the medium’s first century. The show (at the Metropolitan Museum of Art), “Framing A Century: Master Photographers, 1840-1940” was curated by the MET’s Malcolm McDaniel. It included between 10 and 16 images from thirteen photographers (Henry Fox Talbot, Roger Fenton, Gustave Le Gray, Carleton E. Watkins, Nadar, Julia Margaret Cameron, Charles Marville, Eugene Atjet, Edouard Baldus, Man Ray, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brassai, and Walker Evans). With some justification the show was greeted with applause from critics and the press. more...

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Jean Baudrillard’s Andy Warhol Survives Euro Pop

Dr. Gerry Coulter

“There are various solutions, and I find Warhol’s position particularly interesting… Warhol interests me because he develops a media-oriented, mechanical strategy. It’s consistent with the strategy of the system, but faster than the system itself. It doesn’t dispute the system, but it pushes it to the point of absurdity, by overdoing its transparency” (Baudrillard in Genosko, 2001:148). Among the more fascinating art exhibitions to take place in Europe in 2008 was the Europop show at the Kunsthaus in Zürich. The show, which was more...

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Art Scene Review: Singapore

Nizhen Hsieh

For Singapore, being a tiny red dot of an island at the equator with no natural resources and a small population, economy and money tends to trump the desire for a cultural identity. After all, our National icon, the Merlion (a hybridized creature with the head of a lion and the body of a fish) was invented by the Singapore Tourism Board in 1966 with its only significance embodied as a statue projectile-vomiting water into the Singapore River. But it’s understandable considering there’s nothing indigenous of the country that is left. The fishing village that it once was became a strategic trading post along the spice route founded by the British East India Company in 1819. Since then, like America, we have grown into a land of immigrants – Chinese, Malay and Indians who have brought with them a potpourri of ethnicities, traditions and values. more...

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Periphery-resistant

Different registers of engagements with reality

Suzana Milevska & Erden Kosova

This text was conceived and conducted as a dialogue between Suzana Milevska, a curator and writer from Skopje, Macedonia, and Erden Kosova, a critic from Istanbul, Turkey. It is an attempt to discuss the subtle differences between two peripheries and the various modes that the artists employ when dealing with different registers of reality. Socially and politically engaged art practices from different corners of the world are usually considered as part of the same art discourse and cultural background, and often interpreted as being in opposition to formally and aesthetically determined art. However, the completely different political contexts mean that social and political issues in art never play the same role in the different art communities. more...

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Slavica Janešlieva’s Art: “a fragmentary archaeology of memories”*

Zlatko Teodosievski

The turbulent political and social changes that took place after 1990 in Eastern Europe, including Macedonia, could surely not but be reflected in the art scene as well. Macedonian art — in particular the visual arts — seemed to need such a radical historical upheaval in order to be awakened from the fairly comfortable and, without a doubt, the hibernating sleep known as socialist reality. Or perhaps this was just a generational turning point — a new, young and maturing generation of artists with a different sensibility, with fresh ideas, with an uncompromising faith in their art and (maybe) in their own role in society. more...

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When Artist Appears as “Storyteller”…

Slavica Janešlieva

Among the Macedonian people there is a tradition of telling and retelling legends, tales and stories and thus passing them from one generation to the next one. I am not an exception from this tradition and I very much like and enjoy and even feel a great urge of telling stories. Since I am not a writer I don’t choose only words as means of expression. I do like words and language, but I use them only as an additional device to enable the viewer feel the perceptions and various emotions. I tell the stories as a visual artist. Thus what is in my memory i.e. the narration is transformed into a representation, into an object, a color, a materialized substance. more...

interview

Contemporary Arts in/beyond Macedonia

Interview with Suzana Milevska

"I do not consider myself an art historian and I really think that one has to believe in a linear development of art history where certain moments are more important than the others. I have spent a very long time in the attempt to understand what was wrong with art history and I feel I would contradict my basic theoretical principles by accepting to answer this question. I do believe that historic events can influence the artists and art phenomena in certain country, though, but that does not happen in a linear and direct way. However, for such careful extrapolation of the complex reciprocal relations between history and art one would need to write a whole book solely devoted to that topic in order to avoid the possible simplifications. " more...

art agenda

Museums in the 21st Century: Concepts, Projects, Buildings

Oslo, Norway 10th December 2008—11th January 2009

The National Museum (Oslo, Norway) - Architecture and The Art Hall at Tullinløkka launch the exhibition “Museums in the 21st Century: Concepts, Projects, Buildings” The 21st century represents a building boom reflected in the establishment and construction of new museums since 2000, in the renovation and expansion of existing institutions and in the conversion of old industrial monuments to museums, examplified by Kunstmuseum in Lichtenstein by Morger, Diegelo and Kerez, Museum Franz Gertsch in Burgdorf, Aargaauer Kunsthaus by Herzog & de Meuron and Rémy Zaugg, Zentrum Paul Klee by Renzo Piano, Kunsthaus Zürich and Kunstmuseum Basel by Gigon/Guyer in Basel. more...

art agenda

Narrative of a Portrait: Karda’s Che from Revoution to Icon

İstanbul, Turkey, 9.10.2008-04.01.2008

Curated by Trisha Ziff and organised by the UCR/California Museum of Photography, University of California, Riverside, the exhibition traces Ernesto Che Guevara’s well known portrait entitled Guerrillero Heroico(Heroic Guerrilla) taken by Alberto Díaz Korda in 1960. Considered by many to be the most reproduced image in the history of photography, this portrait has symbolised anti-establishment thought and action for decades. more...

art agenda

Nicholas Hlobo at Tate Modern

London, UK 9th December 2008-1st March 2009

Nicholas Hlobo has developed a distinctive body of work, stitching and weaving disparate materials such as ribbon, rubber, gauze and leather to create seductively tactile sculptures and drawings. His works are richly layered, anchored in references to Xhosa culture and the experience of life in post-Apartheid South Africa, while reflecting upon themes of language and communication, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity. The process of making is fundamental to Hlobo. He utilises techniques such as stitching and weaving, which are traditionally undertaken by women in South Africa. more...

art agenda

Chen Wenbo, Asian Rays

Beijing, China 8th November-24th December 2008

PKM Gallery is presents "Asian Rays", an exhibition of new works by Chen Wenbo, who is one of the outstanding painters in Chinese contemporary art. The images in "Asian Rays", Chen Wenbo's first solo show in two years, are based on photographs taken by the artist during his recent travels through various Asian urban centers. The new works in this exhibition are a further extension of the artist's signature photorealist style paintings that can be characterized as urban still-lifes which he has been continuously developing over the past five years. In an almost a Warhol-esque approach, Chen paints objects with great symbolic power, zoning in on the object commodification in contemporary Asian society. more...

art agenda

“If We Can't Get It Together”, Artists rethinking the (mal)function of communities

Toronto, Canada 13th December 2008-22nd February 2009

Contemporary artists Shaina Anand, Egle Budvytyte, Kajsa Dahlberg, Hadley + Maxwell, Luis Jacob, Hassan Khan, Emily Roysdon and Haegue Yang are exhibited at the Power Plant, Toronto. Exploring experimental and imagined social formations, 'If We Can't Get It Together' proposes that the idea of "community" calls out for radical renewal. Sometimes organized around as-yet-unrealized ideals, the new communities explored in the exhibition implicitly ask: what effect does today's upsurge in temporary social groupings-brought on by global migration and newly fluid notions of identity-have on communal and public life? more...