La exposición «En el nombre del padre» explora el legado artístico y vital de Pablo Picasso desde diferentes perspectivas, pero siempre como referente ineludible, y se inscribe en la línea de investigación de la relación de artistas contemporáneos actuales con la obra y la figura de Pablo Picasso.

Se presentarán obras de varios artistas que evidencian su conexión con Picasso. Esta conjunción tiene como objetivo analizar y celebrar la pervivencia de Picasso en el arte de hoy en día. Con una selección de una treintena de obras, participarán en esta exposición: Cristina Lucas, Daniel García-Andújar, Eulalia Valldosera, Miquel Barceló, Pilar Albarracín, Rogelio López Cuenca y Elo Vega, Santiago Sierra, Tania Berta Judith y la familia del cantaor Enrique Morente.

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MetQUITO
Centro Cultural Metropolitano
Ecuador

Curadora: Rosa Martínez | Curadora asistente: Alba Baeza

En La intimidad es política, específicamente concebida para el MetQUITO por Rosa Martínez, se exploran las formas en que se construyen las subjetividades contemporáneas y se analiza cómo se estructuran las políticas de dominación en torno al sexo, el género, la clase social o la etnicidad a través de las obras de 17 artistas y colectivos de Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Egipto, España, Estados Unidos, Guatemala, México, Sudáfrica y la antigua Yugoslavia.

LA INTIMIDAD ES POLÍTICA
Sexo, Género, Lenguaje, Poder
Introducción curatorial de Rosa Martínez

A través de algunas de las propuestas estéticas y conceptuales más relevantes del panorama artístico actual, la exposición LA INTIMIDAD ES POLÍTICA reflexiona sobre el género como construcción social que determina los comportamientos de los sexos, los usos discriminatorios del lenguaje y las estrategias de poder que, al mantener el binomio dominación/sumisión, sustentan la violencia física, cultural e ideológica sobre los cuerpos tanto en los espacios públicos como en los privados.

Para ello, parte de dos enunciaciones históricas y diversos cuestionamientos contemporáneos. La primera enunciación, “No se nace mujer, se llega a serlo”, fue formulada por la filósofa francesa Simone de Beauvoir en su ensayo “El segundo sexo” (1949). Beauvoir afirmaba que desde que nacen, las mujeres reciben un mandato de sumisión que las ha obligado a ocupar históricamente un lugar dependiente y secundario respecto a los hombres.

La segunda “¿Por qué no ha habido grandes mujeres artistas?” corresponde al título del artículo que la historiadora y profesora estadounidense Linda Nochlin publicó en 1971 en la revista Artnews. En él, Nochlin disecciona cómo la prohibición de asistir a las academias de dibujo y la asignación del trabajo doméstico y reproductivo excluyeron a las mujeres de la creación visual.

En el tercer cuestionamiento se recogen posicionamientos decoloniales, indigenistas, transfeministas y queer que van más allá del feminismo clásico como ideología burguesa, y que cuestionan la hegemonía heteropatriarcal, blanca y eurocéntrica. El lema “Cuando una mujer avanza, ningún hombre retrocede”, propuesto desde el Congreso Nacional Indígena en Chiapas, México, abre nuevas perspectivas en defensa de la igualdad.

Sabemos que las sociedades patriarcales han establecido límites entre lo público y lo privado, entre lo social y lo doméstico, entre lo personal y lo político. Estos límites –visibles e invisibles– han perpetuado la apropiación masculina del saber y del poder, y se han traducido en la feminización de la pobreza o en la violencia sexual que mayoritariamente se ejerce contra las mujeres. Hoy, el feminismo interseccional cuestiona esas estructuras de dominio y de exclusión, analiza cómo la masculinidad se afirma a través de la violencia y cómo el cuerpo de la mujer –alquilado, maltratado, sometido– es la última frontera del capitalismo.

La exposición que ahora se presenta pone en cuestión cómo se construyen las subjetividades contemporáneas y cómo se articula la distribución del poder en relación al sexo, el género, la clase social y la etnicidad, entre otras categorías. A la vez que defiende la igualdad política, celebra la diversidad y las diferencias, e invita a reflexionar sobre formas de vivir juntos que respeten el planeta como bien común y la felicidad como proyecto.

El título de la exposición, LA INTIMIDAD ES POLÍTICA, actualiza el lema reivindicativo empleado por los feminismos norteamericanos de los años 70, “lo personal es político”, que sigue siendo hoy plenamente válido. Las estructuras ideológicas actúan en el ámbito de la intimidad y definen los modelos para vivir la sexualidad, las identidades de género, los usos del lenguaje y las formas de ejercer el poder.

Lxs artistas y obras presentadas en esta exposición cuestionan las estructuras de explotación basadas en la perpetuación de la desigualdad y evidencian cómo el arte puede ser una forma de reivindicación, de sanación y de transformación individual y colectiva.

© Texto: Rosa Martínez © Fotos: Artistas

La entrada La intimidad es política (ESP) se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.

A contemporary art exhibition at various heritage sites sheds new light on megalithic sites like Ħaġar Qim, the fortified cities of Mdina and the Citadel, and other historical and popular venues on the Islands. Just as celestial constellations were shaped to provide orientation, the artistic interventions in Constellation Malta will propose points, routes and new itineraries to navigate the local crossover of social, political, economic and artistic contexts. Moving from the local to the cosmic, the project will address the complexities of our contemporary world.

Valletta 2018 – European Capital of Culture

La entrada Constellation Malta – Valletta 2018 se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.

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When Art Reveals Mystic Truths
November 18, 2015–February 28, 2016
Museo Nacional de Escultura . Valladolid. Spain

Organised by Acción Cultural Española (AC/E), the Museo Nacional de Escultura and the General Directorate of Cultural Policy and Cultural Industries and Books

Curator: Rosa Martínez

Selected Artists: Marina Abramovic, Louise Bourgeois, Rivane Neuenschwandér, Anila Quayyum Agha, José Ramón Ais, Pilar Albarracín, Francis Alÿs, Miquel Barceló, Dora García, Cai Guo-Qiang, Anish Kapoor, Waqas Khan, Kimsooja, Cristina Lucas, Bruce Nauman, Nikos Navridis, Eglé Rakauskaité, Soledad Sevilla, Josefa Tolrá, Eulalia Valldosera, Bill Viola.

The exhibition entitled Fear Nothing, She Says. When Art Reveals Mystic Truths, the last of the acts organised by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport to celebrate the fifth centenary of the birth of Saint Teresa of Jesus, has been produced by Acción Cultural Española (AC/E), the Museo Nacional de Escultura, and the General Directorate of Cultural Policy and Cultural Industries and Books. The museum opens its three monumental venues for the very first time to welcome the show.

Curated by Rosa Martínez, artistic director of the international biennials of Venice and Istanbul, the exhibition explores the meaning of spiritual searches at the onset of the third millennium, establishing the need to find their common anthropological thread and endorsing their connection with creative languages.

These 21 contemporary artists have been chosen for their thematic, conceptual, existential or political affinities with the figure and legacy of Teresa of Avila: Marina Abramovic, Anila Quayyum Agha, José Ramón Ais, Pilar Albarracín, Francis Alÿs, Miquel Barceló, Louise Bourgeois, Dora García, Anish Kapoor, Waqas Khan, Kimsooja, Cristina Lucas, Bruce Nauman, Nikos Navridis, Rivane Neuenschwander, Cai Guo-Qiang, Egl? Rakauskait?, Soledad Sevilla, Josefa Tolrà, Eulalia Valldosera and Bill Viola. Works designed specifically for the show complement others that coexist with unique pieces from the museum’s historical collections.

The exhibition title revises the verse by Teresa of Jesus, transforming “Let nothing perturb you, nothing frighten you” into the simpler “fear nothing,” which it then relates to the novel Détruire, dit-elle (Destroy, She Said) by Marguerite Duras, another great authoress and sufferer for love. The exhibition title’s afterthought, “She Says,” reaffirms the fact that the invitation to overcome obstacles and fears is conveyed in the words of a woman, and therefore opens up to the new developments of global ethical and aesthetic awareness that demands, as Saint Teresa herself often did, the inclusion of women as subjects of knowledge and power.

The Museo Nacional de Escultura has three buildings located on the same street: the Colegio de San Gregorio, founded as a school of theology in the 15th century, and two noble residences of the 16th century, the Palacio de Villena and the Casa del Sol. In these spaces, the exhibition itinerary explores the symbiotic relationships between memory and new forms of aesthetic enjoyment. Such critical interaction extends to nearby Coco Café, where the spheres of public and private, civic and institutional associations are connected. The four venues form a constellation that establishes intertextual dialogues and updates the significance of material, linguistic and ideological quests.

Fear Nothing, She Says. When Art Reveals Mystic Truths, on view from November 18, 2015 to February 28, 2016 in Valladolid, is accompanied by a bilingual catalogue (Spanish-English) published by Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) and Ediciones Anómalas under the direction of Rosa Martínez. In the catalogue, readers will find reflections on Teresa of Avila and on art as a spiritual path, as expressed in the images of the works by the participating artists and in the essays by María Bolaños, director of the Museo Nacional de Escultura, the historian Giuliana Di Febo, the psychoanalyst and writer Julia Kristeva, and the curator of the show, Rosa Martínez.

The digital version of the catalogue may be downloaded free of charge from the Acción Cultural Española official website: www.accioncultural.es (Available under a Creative Commons license.)

MNE contact: prensa.museoescultura@mecd.es
AC/E contact: monica.hernandez@accioncultural.es

Info on the exhibition: http://www.e-flux.com/announcements/fear-nothing-she-says/

TV report: http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/metropolis/metropolis-nada-temas-dice-ella-english-version/3621147/

La entrada Fear Nothing, She Says. National Museum of Sculpture, Valladolid, Spain 2015-2016 se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.

Curators: Rosa Martínez, Daniela Ferretti, Francesco Poli, Axel Vervoordt
Palazzo Fortuny, San Marco 3780-San Beneto, Venice
4 June – 27 November 2011

Selected artists: Among them: Marina Abramovi, Carla Accardi, Giovanni Anselmo, Janine Antoni, Bae Bien-U, Ida Barbarigo, Miquel Barceló, Matthew Barney, Massimo Bartolini, Alighiero Boetti, Otto Boll, Alberto Burri, Francesco Candeloro, Chen Zhen, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Filippo De Pisis, Maurizio Donzelli, Piero Dorazio, Marcel Duchamp, Luciano Fabro, Lara Favaretto, León Ferrari, Lucio Fontana, Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo, Mariano Fortuny y Marsal, Fernando Garbellotto, Alberto Giacometti, Anthony Gormley, Gotthard Graubner, Cao Guimarães, Sadaharu Horio, Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, Wassily Kandinsky, Anish Kapoor, Kcho, Paul Klee, Osamu Kokofu, Jannis Kounellis, Mitsuko Kuebli, Luisa Lambri, Fernand Léger, Man Ray
Piero Manzoni, Gordon Matta-Clark, Sebastián Matta, Fausto Melotti, Ana Mendieta, Marisa Merz, Domi Mora, Saburo Murakami, Shirin Neshat, Rivane Neuenschwander, Louise Nevelson, Hans Op de Beeck, Roman Opalka, Giulio Paolini, Lygia Pape, Giuseppe Penone, Otto Piene, Hugo Pratt, Kichizaemon Rakú, Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, Gerhard Richter, Auguste Rodin, Mark Rothko, Doris Salcedo, Remo Salvadori, Richard Serra, Fujiko Shiraga, Kazuo Shiraga, Kimsooja, Jesús Rafael Soto, Ettore Spalletti, Dominique Stroobant, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Antoni Tápies, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Marco Tirelli, Jame Turrell, Luc Tuymans, Günther Uecker, Alex Van Gelder, Emilio Vedova, Giorgio Vigna, Nanda Vigo, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Maaria Wirkkala, Gao Xingjian, Jiro Yoshihara 

The Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia and the Vervoordt Foundation present TRA. EDGE OF BECOMING – a specially curated group show of over 300 works of art at the Palazzo Fortuny, which explores the transversal links between places, history, creative heritage and universal wisdom.

Following the path of the internationally acclaimed trilogy ARTEMPO (2007), ACADEMIA (2008) and IN-FINITUM (2009), TRA. EDGE OF BECOMING (2011), brings together the rich legacy of Mariano Fortuny, the wabi inspirations of Axel Vervoordt, the reflexions of the economic thinker Bernard Lietaer, the scientist Eddi de Wolf and the architect Tatsuro ‘Taro’ Miki, and aims to create an aesthetic, intellectual and enlightening experience which will encourage the visitor to read the world through art.

The curatorial team for TRA. EDGE OF BECOMING is composed of Daniela Ferretti, director of Palazzo Fortuny; Rosa Martínez, curator and art advisor; Francesco Poli, philosopher and art history professor; and Axel Vervoordt, president of the Vervoordt Foundation.

The exhibition will transform the four floors of Palazzo Fortuny into a complex exhibition trail where dialogue and interaction between the artworks, the viewer and the space itself is of fundamental importance. Some of the world’s most important artists will be represented in the exhibition, including Auguste Rodin, Marina Abramovic, Lucio Fontana, Miquel Barcelò, Anish Kapoor, Fernand Léger and Antoní Tápies. A large number of artists have also been specially commissioned for the show including Massimo Bartolini, Maurizio Donzelli, Fernando Garbellotto, Jannis Kounellis, Giulio Paolini, Francesco Candeloro, Dominique Stroobant, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Kimsooja, Günther Uecker, Giorgio Vigna, and Carl Michael von Hausswolff.   In addition, to commemorate this exceptional exhibition, visitors will be given a unique opportunity to view parts of the original Palazzo which have previously been closed to the public, including the Atelier of Mariano Fortuny on the first floor, three new lateral rooms on the second floor, and seven late gothic windows which have been closed since the 18th century.

About the title

TRA was chosen for its many meanings. Firstly, it can be read inversely to spell ‘art’. In Italian it is a preposition that signifies ‘in-between’ and ‘inside’, and also connotes an action that goes ‘beyond’ or ‘ahead of”. TRA is also a common suffix in many Sanskrit words such as ‘mantra’, ‘tantra’, ‘yantra’. Mantra is the literal translation of ‘instrument of thought’, man – to think and tra – an instrument or tool. ‘Tantra’ is the ancient system of knowledge that connects sexual and cosmic energy. ‘Yantras’ are the signs and drawings that act like doors for energetic healing.

TRA relates to the idea of being purified through a ritual and creative transformation. It is also the space between two dimensions and marks the moment of passage and a breach towards new experiences. In this sense, TRA connects to the Japanese notion of “ma” that indicates the empty, yet positive space between two objects. The subtitle of the exhibition, EDGE OF BECOMING, relates to the void leading to the possible powers of energy. TRA. EDGE OF BECOMING seeks the healing balance and creative interaction that unfolds every beginning.

Music  

The Belgian musician, composer and professor Mireille Cappelle, has specially created an architecture sonore for TRA, directly inspired by the ideas and concepts behind the exhibition. A long term collaborator with the Vervoordt Foundation and the Palazzo Fortuny, Cappelle also created Anello for Artempo, Naga for Academia, and Sunyata for In-finitum. For TRA. EDGE OF BECOMING, Cappelle comments: “Sonorous architectures are destined to exist in spaces which vibrate with them. They are an auditory reflection of all that is present. Every visitor entering the space will become part of this architecture with his respiration, his words, his steps…”

Catalogue

TRA. Edge of Becoming will be accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue published in English and Italian by the Studio Luc Derycke and MER Paper Kunsthalle, Ghent and in collaboration with Skira for the Italian distribution. The catalogue, edited by Axel Vervoordt, will feature essays by Francesco Poli, professor at the University of Turin and Milan, art critic and specialist of Arte Povera,  Eddi De Wolf, professor Physics at the Antwerp University and researcher at CERN, Geneva; Tatsuro ‘Taro’ Miki, Japanese architect in Brussels and co-author of the book ‘axel vervoordt. Wabi inspirations’; Rosa Martínez, curator, art critic and international art advisor and Axel Vervoordt, president of the Vervoordt Foundation. The English version will be available before the opening of the exhibition. Another version, also available in Italian, will be available later in June, which will include images of the exhibition in situ. The first version of the catalogue will be available in the SKIRA-bookshop of the Palazzo Fortuny; the second version will be available at the same bookshop and also through the distribution of SKIRA and Exhibition International.

La entrada TRA. Edge of Becoming, Palazzo Fortuny, Venecia, 2011 se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.

Artists: Elssie Ansareo, Ibon Aranberri, Manu Arregui, Clemente Bernad, Abigail Lazkoz, Maider López, Asier Mendizabal, Itziar Okariz, Aitor Ortiz, Juan Pérez Agirregoikoa, Sergio Prego, and Ixone Sádaba

For information:
Communication Department
Guggenheim Bilbao Museum
e mail: media@guggenheim-bilbao.es
telf: +34 94 435 90 91
fax: +34 94 435 90 59

GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM BILBAO
Abandoibarra Et. 2, 48001 Bilbao, Spain

Museum information desk: (+34) 94 435 90 80
Information: informacion@guggenheim-bilbao.es
Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.

Chacun à son gout presents a selection of contemporary Basque artists who have all produced new projects in an exhibition specially conceived for the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum’s tenth anniversary.
Taken from Diderot, the title of the exhibition champions individual taste and freedom of choice. As a phenomenon relative toperception and time, taste may evolve according to social and individual preferences, and is influenced by class, gender, geopolitics, and aesthetic education.
Every new artwork, every new exercise in interpretation contributes new perspectives to the public’s reservoir of tastes and values. The twelve selected artists are part of a generation established in the late nineties using international art languages to respond to the complexities of their local milieu.

Elssie Ansareo’s La Danse des Flâneuses is a large photographic mural that dramatizes identity and otherness, situating familiar imagery alongside a gallery of phantasmagorical characters. This timeless genealogy subverts social hierarchies of origin and status.

Horizons is a series of bright pennants by Ibon Aranberri that zigzag from the roof of the museum, recycling and modifying Chillida’s graphic and sculptural legacy. In an ironic linguistic operation, cultural and political icons and anagrams are reconfigured to playfully demystify symbolism and memory.

In his latest film, Disarmingly Cute Manu Arregui explores the physical and psychological transformation of Vanesa Jiménez, known as “the glass girl” due to a degenerative illness, to question the concept of hyper-reality and the ethics of TV reporting.

Clemente Bernad uses photography as a social document in series that are either commissioned by newspapers or the result of his own inspiration, such as Day Laborers, Basque Chronicles, and Open Tombs a report on extreme left-wing Turkish prisoners.

Abigail Lazkoz’s black-and-white drawings double as a kind of restrained, synthetic writing in 130,000 Years of Last Tendencies, a large mural work that alludes to the art industry’s obsession with fashion and novelty, while recalling burial rites as a form of anthropological culture.

Maider López returns to the concept of spatial geometry to work an ironic, chameleonic transformation on one of the museum’s more classically designed galleries. By turning it into a “Frank Gehry gallery”, the artist borrows the architect’s signature style to question notions of authorship.

In Nom de guerre, Asier Mendizabal takes an apparent ready-made from an incident of street violence: a can that burns away on a concrete block like an urban joss-stick holder. In the limpid context of the museum building, the flames act as a sign of social angst, questioning both notions of control and the commemorative function of sculpture.

Sentences like Have You Given in to Your Desire to Master? are inscribed on placards by Juan Pérez Agirregoikoa to signify social urges and political violence. Some of them are to be found in Project Turned into Installation, fixed to a sports hurdle.

With Irrintzi, an action shot on video, Itziar Okariz moves around the museum emitting irrintzis, an ancestral Basque shout. This tour in sound apprehends the space semantically in a play of contrasts between remote signifiers, such as the traditional connotations of the irrintzi and the spectacular modernity of the Guggenheim Bilbao.

Aitor Ortiz’s Y combines a series of photographic panels with a real opening in one wall of the museum. The work explores our phenomenological perception of architecture and the lines between reality, sculpture and photographic representation.

The concept of sculpture as intervention rather than merely object has led Sergio Prego to install Sequence of Dihedrals in the courtain walls of the museum Atrium. Although the title appears to be a simple allusion to geometrical abstraction, the work is in fact a conceptual challenge to the actual function of art in a museum.

Ixone Sádaba explores issues of identity by splitting her own image, organizing theatrical dance routines in sublime, apocalyptic landscapes. Poétique de la disparition and Leviathan are two photo series in which intimate or atmospheric turbulence becomes a metaphor for a tragic, contemporary dysfunction.

La entrada Chacun À Son Gout, Museo Guggenheim Bilbao, 2007-2008 se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.

Link to the site: Universes in Universe

La entrada Time Presents, Time Past, Istanbul Modern, Estambul, 2007 se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.

Venue: Istanbul Modern
Dates: 18th October2006 -2nd February 2007
Curated by: Rosa Martínez

Artists: Semiha Berksoy, Donna Conlon, Bruna Esposito, Regina José Galindo, Guerrilla Girls, Subodh Gupta, Mona Hatoum, Emily Jacir, William Kentridge, Rem Koolhaas, Juan Muñoz, Nikos Navridis, Robin Rhode, Berni Searle, Valeska Soares, Bulent Sangar, Antoni Tàpies, Pascale Martine Tayou, The Centre of Attention, Joana Vasconcelos

For the first time in the 110-year long history of the Venice Biennale, the world renown art event is moving beyond the borders of Venice and Italy with the exhibition Venice-Istanbul and Istanbul Museum of Modern Art is honored to host it. The 51. International Art Exhibition (La Biennale di Venezia) marks the important achievement of the Biennale to celebrate the most critical pieces in the contemporary art world of today under the directorship of two female curators for the first time: Rosa Martínez and María de Corral. Rosa Martínez, who is the Chief Curator of Istanbul Modern, directed this year’s Biennale and was responsible for the exhibition “Always a little further” presented at the impressive 9,000 m 2 venue of the Arsenale. The Venice Biennale has for over a century been one of the most prestigious cultural institutions in the world. Ever since its foundation in 1895, it has been in the avant-garde, promoting new artistic trends and organising international events in the contemporary arts in accordance with a multi-disciplinary model which characterises its unique nature.

The exhibition Venice-Istanbul will open at Istanbul Modern on October 18th, 2006 and run through February 2nd,2007. It is in fact a project that continues the platform that Venice Biennale has created. The Biennale model offers a wonderful chance to analyze the new concept of internationality and to draw attention to the role of art as a tool for cultural interchange. Istanbul Modern is organizing Venice-Istanbul in direct cooperation with the two directors of the Venice Biennale 2005: María de Corral and Rosa Martínez. Through the final selection of Rosa Martínez the dialogue between the pieces will continue in a city surrounded by water and embedded in a very rich history just like Venice. The pieces in Venice-Istanbul have never been in exhibited in Turkey before. A new dialogue between these extraordinary art pieces and the new context where they will be exhibited will enable a rich interplay between two cities that have dominated the artistic and historical arena for centuries.

Semiha Berksoy, Donna Conlon, Bruna Esposito, Regina José Galindo, Guerrilla Girls, Subodh Gupta, Mona Hatoum, Emily Jacir, William Kentridge, Rem Koolhaas, Juan Muñoz, Nikos Navridis, Robin Rhode, Berni Searle, Valeska Soares, Bulent Sangar, Antoni Tàpies, Pascale Martine Tayou, The Centre of Attention and Joana Vasconcelos, some key artists of the 2005 Venice Biennale, will be presented in the exhibition in Istanbul Modern. Their works touch upon issues such as love, death, the role of the female within the society, life in the contemporary metropolis, and others. Venice-Istanbul will enable the visitors in Istanbul to have the once in a lifetime chance to see the Venice Biennale outside of Venice and furthermore offer an articulated reading of international contemporary art from the seventies through today, with an eye to the near future.

La entrada Venice – Istambul, 2007, Istanbul Modern se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.

Curator: Rosa Martinez
Venue: Istanbul Modern
Dates: September 18th, 2005, January 8th, 2006

Istanbul Modern
Meclis-i Mebusan Cad. Liman Sahasi
Antrepo No:4 Karakoy – Istanbul
Tel: +90 212 334 73 00
Fax: +90 212 243 43 19
info@istanbulmodern.org
http://www.istanbulmodern.org
Opening hours:
Tuesday to Sunday: 10:00 to 18:00; Thursdays: 10:00 to 20:00
Closed on Mondays

For further information please contact:
Handan Senkoken, Press Office
Tel: + 90 212 243 65 61
Fax: +90 212 243 43 19
handan.senkoken@istanbulmodern.org

The notion of “Centre of Gravity” applied to the world of art refers to the continuous play between equilibrium and uncertainty to create new and meaningful conceptual and aesthetic worlds. The multiplicity of trends in contemporary art and the emergence of new geographical centres of cultural significance have introduced relevant transformations in pictorial and sculptural languages and have also facilitated the balance between centre and periphery, creating new centres of gravity outside the classical hegemonic ones.

Interrelating many levels of meaning and multiple aesthetic perspectives, the exhibition entitled Centre of Gravity marks certain significant moments in the aesthetic production of the past few decades, presenting artists of international renown such as Haluk Akakçe, Pilar Albarracín, Ghada Amer, Janine Antoni, Christian Boltanski, Monica Bonvicini, Louise Bourgeois, Anish Kapoor, Gülsün Karamustafa, Rem Koolhaas, Jeff Koons, Juan Muñoz, Kemal Önsoy, Santiago Sierra, Richard Wentworth and Maaria Wirkkala.. The exhibition is held coinciding with the celebration of the 9th International Istanbul Biennial and other cultural events that complement one another, turning the city into a genuine international centre of gravity. While the Biennial diligently pursues its consolidation as a reference for new artistic developments, Istanbul Modern, which opened on 11 December 2004, is taking its first steps with the aim of institutionalising the memory of modern art produced in Turkey and of bringing to Istanbul outstanding works by established artists who have revealed some of the aesthetical, social and political concerns of our convulsed world. The title of this first international exhibition also plays with the idea of Istanbul Modern as a new gravitational centre in relation to its geopolitical area and to the global context of new international museums. The artists are presenting works subtly united by an invisible common thread: that of reflection on equilibrium, either in the physical, the psychological, the cultural or the political sphere.

All the works displayed are propounded as centres for condensing meaning in order to transform the exhibition into a place for symbolic exchange between artists and the community. Helping to form critical and sensitive citizens and to promote new aesthetic and political dialogues are undoubtedly fundamental tasks for museums. Aesthetic experience implies a breach in the automatic reading of signs, for it reflects and subverts representational space proposing new gazes, new reflections. Paul Valéry wrote that poetic creation is the creation of expectation, and political hope for social change can also be included in this will. Today, it is necessary to encourage new relations based on desire, to establish transferences with people, objects or symbolic systems to favour the creation of that ‘transferential plasticity’ that will help us recover and heal the world in which we live. Expectation, pleasure and reflection are what we hope this exhibition, within its bounds, will help to generate.

On the occassion of the exhibition a full colour catalogue has been produced. In addition to the essay by the curator, texts by Homi Bhabha, Louise Bourgeois, Christian Boltanski, Rem Koolhaas, Jan-Erik Lundström and other significant writers will be included together with an interview to the Nobel Physiscs prize Ilya Prigogine realized by Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Exhibition Sponsor: Türk Ekonomi Bankasi

ISTANBUL MODERN
Founder: Eczacibasi
Main Sponsors: Avea – Hedef Alliance

La entrada Centre of Gravity, Istanbul Modern. Estambul 2005 se publicó primero en Rosa Martínez - Independent Art Curator.