ISCP Talk
October 5, 2010

Salon: Isabelle Cornaro (France) and Alexandra Navratil (Switzerland)

Isabelle Cornaro will present documentation of a few recent works (installations, sculptures and films) and her upcoming projects. Cornaro’s work, which is transdisciplinary, includes the use of cultural objects and images (the transposition of classical paintings, casts of kitsch domestic objects) and it plays with issues such as systems of representation, commodity fetishism and the creative gesture.

Isabelle Cornaro (born 1974 in France) studied Art History at the Ecole du Louvre (Paris, France) and Visual Arts at the Ecole des Beaux Arts (Paris, France). She was an artist-in-residence at the Palais de Tokyo’s Pavilion in 2005-2006. Since then, she exhibited in France and abroad in group shows (Kunstlerhaus Stuttgart, Germany; Museum of Modern Art of Bergamo, Italy; Raven Row, London, UK). She also had several solos exhibitions in galleries and institutions (La Ferme du Buisson, Noisiel, France; Kunstverein Düsseldorf, Germany; Gallery Balice Hertling, Paris, France).

Alexandra Navratil will present a new series of drawings and photographs in her studio and two recent video works.

Alexandra Navratil’s (born 1978 in Zürich, Switzerland) work in various media including video, photography and drawing examines historical and political concepts of perception and their correlations with systems of representations in cinema, architecture and politics. Navratil graduated with an MFA from Goldsmiths College in London in 2007. She recently exhibited her work at Formcontent, London; Lothringer13/Laden, Munich; MUSAC, León and Galeria Angels, Barcelona, among others, and was awarded the Swiss Art Award in 2009.

Participating Residents

Exhibition
October 1–October 24, 2010

There Has Been No Future, There Will Be No Past

Regional exhibitions often use sociopolitical history as a key in the interpretation of the work of artists who, despite obvious consistencies in their background, do not share a single cultural identity. This approach bypasses individual histories and regularly leads to forms of cultural profiling persistent enough to affect even those younger generations of artists whose work does not deal with collective history. The art from Central and Eastern Europe is no exception. As Zdenka Badovinac (1) has noted, artists and cultural practicioners from this region must be aware that they can only move forward by complying with world standards, as well as, being concerned of how their otherness is perceived. For Badovinac, otherness must be continuously and actively redefined, to save it from becoming a pattern or, worse, drifting into folklore. Today, the work of visual artists from this region is too often considered in direct relation to the socialist ideologies that dominated the former Eastern Bloc, a perspective that fails to acknowledge the breadth and scope of contemporary art practice in Central and Eastern Europe.

In this regard, There Has Been No Future, There Will Be No Past curated by Marco Antonini and Sandrine Canac was conceived as a platform for self-representation and dialogue. Participating artists include Rada Boukova, Eric Stephany, Igor Eskinja, Andreas Fogarasi, Wojcieh Gilewicz, Marzena Nowak, Jan Mancuska, Jiri Skala, Svatopluk Mikyta, Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkacova, Kader Muzaqi, Svetlana Mircheva, Irgin Sena, Ellie Krakow, Tehnica Schweitz (Gergely Laszlo & Peter Rakosi), Katarina Sevic, Katarina Zdjelar and Maziar Afrassiabi.

The curators invited eight ISCP alumni from Central and Eastern Europe whose work does not address the social and political history of their countries. Each of the artists was invited to nominate a peer artist to take part in the exhibition in an effort to expand the geographic context and ambit of the project. This nomination process engaged the artists in the curatorial process allowing them to further articulate on their own artistic discourse, placing their work and the work of their peers on a personally drawn ‘map’. The invited artists have not only contributed to the visual and conceptual outcome of the exhibition, but also offered new perspectives in its interpretation. Furthermore, the artists will incorporate ‘non-art’ images (inspirational material, unfinished works, archives, sketches etc.) in the exhibition, highlighting the importance of personal materials in the development of their work.

Deliberately avoiding the creation of paradigmatic models for the interpretation of contemporary art from Central and Eastern Europe, There Has Been No Future, There Will Be No Past adopts a free and discursive approach. In this way, the exhibition emphasizes the network of intellectual exchanges that sustained its development, highlighting the fragmented complexity of an unpredictable group portrait.

(1) From: ‘Undefining the Other: Markus Miessen in conversation with Zdenka Badovinac’, in Markus Miessen, ed., East Coast Europe, (Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2008), 71.

This exhibition was supported by: Austrian Cultural Forum New York, Brooklyn Arts Council, Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York, Czech Center New York, Italian Cultural Institute in New York, Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic, plus421 Foundation, Polish Cultural Institute in New York and Supreme Digital. Thanks to the Young Visual Artist Awards (YVAA), a major artist fellowship in Central and Southeastern Europe that culminates with a residency at ISCP for supporting emerging artists of the region.

Opening Reception: Oct 01, 2010

Participating Residents

ISCP Talk
September 28, 2010

Salon: Maja Hodoscek (Slovenia) and Jiri Skala (Czech Republic)

Maja Hodoscek will screen Promised Land, a video dealing with labor market discrimination towards migrant workers in various EU countries. This project explores their position within contemporary society, their rights, working conditions and existential situation. 149 workers, who went to Slovenia from ex-Yugoslavia to work in a construction company called Gradis, were fired because the company went bankrupt. They currently all live together in a single home near Hodoscek’s house. Promised Land shows Hodoscek inviting them over for lunch, cooking goulash and having fun.

Maja Hodoscek lives and works in Celje, Slovenia. She graduated in 2009 from the Faculty of Education, Department of Fine Arts, University of Maribor, Slovenia. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally at multiple video festivals and exhibitions. In 2010, Hodoscek received the OHO Award for Young Visual Artists organized by Zavod P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Jiri Skala will present a performance, Fathers Mouth, written and filmed two years ago but never presented live. A play for a couple, it will be performed by Marek Milde and Kristyna Milde. Skala strives towards freeing himself radically from the language of visual art in order to embrace experimental forms of literature. Skala’s work often demands the undivided attention of it’s viewer, at the same time as it is characterized by a strong will to reach out and communicate. His strength lies in connecting the literary process with artistic content, and his ability to thematize personal relationships as well as analyze larger complex social relations.

Jiri Skala (born 1976 in Czech Republic) studied at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts, and at the postgraduate program at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, France. He is co-founder of the Etc. Gallery in Prague, established in 2004, and is a member of the PAS group, together with the artist Tomás Vaněk and curator Vít Havranek. He is listed in The Younger than Jesus Artist Directory compiled by the New Museum in New York, and in November 2009 he was awarded the Jindřich Chalupecký Award for young artists in the Czech Republic by Vaclav Havel. JRP Ringier published his bookOne Family of Objects in 2010.

Participating Residents