The Pancevo Art Salon returns this year from November 20th to 30th, 2008. This event will include an exhibition of local and international artists works, performances, public workshops, presentations and a mystery urban excursion addressing this year’s thematic tensions + breaking points. This event is hosted by Pancevo City Cultural Center and curated by Kyd Campbell from the nomadic curatorial project frontierlab.org.
The works presented in this exhibition vary in medium, ideas and approaches but each deals with tension or rather the release of tension. Now that the program has been assembled it seems unavoidable to make a connection between these expressions and to concepts of revolt and revolution. A great many exhibitions in south-eastern Europe and indeed across the world present images of cultural, political, geographical, and emotional tensions but this exhibition is a proposal for some action and voice. This international collection of works provides many personal takes on how to remain active within and also maybe emerge from states of tension. A central focus of this exhibition is on questioning and recognising the personal in situations that may seem larger than us.
In this world, to think of creating something beautiful seems a terrible insensitivity, almost a mockery of those who, at this very moment, are being tortured, brutalised, raped, killed. How can we write poetry or paint pictures or give talks when we know what is happening around us? [John Holloway, 2008]. Here, with the collaboration of all of the artists, a stage has been set for exploring the possibility that critical action, on public or personal levels, must be asymmetrical [as described in the essay ‘On Poetry and Revolution’, John Holloway, ‘nicht alles tun / cannot do everything’, Unrast-Verlag, Munster,2008]. For the most part, in curating this exhibition, I purposefully avoided works that operate as or resemble media and political tactics. Do not fight your fires with fire.
Following this idea, it was important that this exhibition must not present sterile, paralyzed or generalized approaches and messages. Though all of these works take a critical standpoint, this is also an opportunity to test the value of personalized and emotional expressions and of beauty and aesthetic value.
The greatest challenge in presenting the 2008 Pancevo Art Salon, with this topic and approach is essentially one of structural tension. This exhibition brings a number of maverick art works together as a solution towards making accessible these dynamic and individual approaches in the approachable structure and vocabulary of a formal
gallery setting. Maybe there will be time for beauty and art after the revolution. Can that time be now?
Vernissage : Thursday, November 20th, 19h [presentations and Salesman of Male Tears, performance by Gjorgje Jovanovik (MK)]
Events:
Saturday, November 22nd
11h-14h : Graffiti Workshop with Zosen (AR/SP) [12 participants]
17h : Artists presentations, Branka Curcic[KUDA.org], Gjorge Jovanovik
18h : Public presentation of work from the graffiti workshop and DJs
Thursday, November 27th
18h : Artist presentations (Ivana Jovanovic, Veljko Onjin) + Guided tour of the exhibition with curator Kyd Campbell
Saturday, November 29th, 19pm
MYSTERY URBAN EXCURSION in PANCEVO with Angela Dorrer
Meet at the Pancevo Gallery of Contemporary Art
GALERIJA SAVREMENE UMETNOSTI
Trg kralja Petra I 8, Pancevo, Serbia
Artists:
AGF/Delay [Germany/Finland]
Aleksandra Mir [Poland]
Angela Dorrer [Germany/Canada]
EVOL(Roc Jimenez de Cineros) [Spain]
Gjorgje Jovanovik [Macedonia]
Istvan Kantor [Canada/Hungary]
Ivana Jovanovic [Serbia]
KUDA.org [Serbia]
Lucas Ablela [Australia]
Robert Del Tredici [Canada/USA]
Veljko Onjin [Serbia]
Zosen [Argentina/Spain]