International Art News

Peter Králik, Agroskate, 2011, digital print, 75 x 53 cm, courtesy of the author.

Until the 23rd of September – Nitra Gallery
The curatorial exhibition project taking place during the 30th Summer Olympics in London presents a varied selection of works related to the theme of sports, created by contemporary artists from Slovakia and abroad. Sport is a multifaceted phenomenon; therefore it is shown from different points of view – serious and humorous.

The exhibition presents a relatively large number of videos as a reaction to our passive, TV-based relationship to sports. The selection also includes almost every medium, from drawing to interactive installation.

For easier orientation and understanding of its individual layers, the exhibition is divided into several free thematic groups. The first part is dedicated to art, connected to sports in specific ways, which critically comments on various political and social problems. Another part is looking at sports as a physical activity, training and fitness, offering the visitors a possibility to exercise directly in the exhibition halls. The exhibition tackles also topics such as memory, history, recycling, subjective experience, inner worlds and construction of new contexts. Sport is, of course, a fun activity, so one of the sections is dominated by humour, irony and absurdity. And since ice hockey is perhaps the most important sporting phenomenon of Slovakia, we have dedicated a whole room to it.

The exhibition’s ambition is not to present an exhausting survey of sporting themes in contemporary art. It is rather a living mosaic which seeks to illustrate and focus on some principal artistic perspectives of these topics. And it’s not just a one-sided relationship, because after all, some sports are now and then described as art.

Exhibiting artists: Mária Čorejová (SK), Josef Dabernig (AT), Martin Derner (SK), Ivan Dudáš (SK), Christoph Höschele & Kai Kaspar (AT), Anetta Mona Chişa & Lucia Tkáčová (SK), Andrea Kalinová (SK), Peter Kalmus (SK), Krištof Kintera (CZ), Patrik Kovačovský (SK), Peter Králik (SK), Antal Lakner (HU), Svätopluk Mikyta (SK), Petr Motyčka (CZ), Vlad Nancă (RO), Jacek Niegoda (PL), Štefan Papčo (SK), Alejandro Paz (GT), Pode B al (CZ), Tomáš Rafa (SK), Jiří Surůvka (CZ)

Nitrianska galéria

Toguo, "Road to Exile," 2007. Installation: wood, cloth and bottles vokda. Dimensions variable. Courtesy MAM Mario Mauron Contemporary Art Vienna & Salzburg. © ADAGP, November 2010.

Until April 17 2011 – Musee d’Art Moderne de St. Etienne
Thematic group exhibition (35 international artists)
The exhibition “Islands never found” wants to show, through the works of 35 international artists (Japan, USA, Germany, Italy, France, Greece, Cyprus, Morocco …) and shared a common sensibility, oriented towards the pursuit of authenticity, in a complex sociological and anthropological context.

Without denying or refusing to see reality as it surrounds us, the artists exhibited are all trying to uncover more than just creativity, full of visions, rerouting and poetry. The artist is sometimes contradictory, self-destructive and tormented in the excess and fantasy, full of insatiable curiosity. It creates new values, new languages, new signs and metaphors, and generates new connections, and offers new contexts and cultural and mental systems.

The “Islands never found” are areas of special creation, unique and individual in which each artist defines and clearly communicates its own approach, its own language and symbol system, its own ideological vision, philosophy, aesthetics and history of the world. The life and work of artists can also be understood in the metaphorical quest for “the island”, “their place”, “their land”. All inventions organizational forms, languages, visual signals and new personal accounts are the land of empathy and imagination that present themselves as islands.

In this sense,  the artwork looks like a long and eternal journey through which artists, following their own star, continually discovering new islands and new continents and new worlds – conquer new territories, develop and occupy new areas by their methods and abilities.  This eternal journey is an account at once dramatic, poetic and picturesque, a conflict of hope and disappointment, loss and discoveries, work, pleasure and joy, but also destruction lapse, anger, sadness, loneliness and self-denial, reason and irrationality, madness and obsession.

Above all, the exhibition “Islands never found” is  a tribute to those artists capable of creating new situations and new territories  , like the islands of the vast oceans, simultaneously evoking the asylum and prison, home and Hell, the release and dissolution.
Artists
Marina Abramovic (Serbia), Alice Aycock (USA), Marina Bolla (Italy) Louise Bourgeois, (USA) Yves Bresson (France), Tony Cragg (Great Britain), Danica Dakic (Bosnia) Latifa ECHAKCH (Morocco), Jan Fabre (Belgium), Hans Peter Feldmann (Germany), Gloria Friedmann, (Germany / France) , Carlos GARAICOA (Cuba), GILBERT & GEORGE (UK) Siobhan HAPASKA, (Great Britain) Rebecca HORN (Germany) , Ilya Kabakov (Russia), Anselm Kiefer (Germany) , Kimsooja (Korea / USA), Jannis KOUNELLIS (Greece / Italy), Maria Loizidou (Cyprus), Richard Long (Great Britain) , Natsuyuki NAKANISHI (Japan), Nannucci Maurizio ( Italy ), Luigi ONTANI ( Italy ) , Dennis Oppenheim (USA) , Orlan (France), Michelangelo PISTOLETTO ( Italy ) , Lucas Samaras (Greece / USA), Toguo (Cameroon / France) , TSIVOPOULOS Stefanos (Greece), Costas TSOCLIS (Greece) , Mamoru TSUKADA (Japan, lives in Berlin), Günther Uecker (Germany), Lois Weinberger (Austria) and Dimitirs XONOGLOU (Greece).

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