ART Athina 30.05-03.06

ART Athina takes steps beyond the self-evident ones, which include: publicity aimed at Greek and international mass media (art-related printed material, luxury lifestyle, broadcasts, travel, etc.); a press office in Athens covering the whole country and press offices in Paris and London. They also include: a Communication and Promotion Program of Events aiming at highlighting Art Athina(Pre-events, Media Events, Official Opening Event, Parallel Activities, organization of Europe-wide briefings, entertainment and dining of media representatives in England, France and Germany, establishing links with international events such as Gulf Art Fair, Sharjah Biennale, and the Moscow Biennale among others, Press Trip to Athens on the occasion of the opening of the fair).The goal abroad is to show-case the special characteristics and advantages of Art Athina, so as to attract attention to those parameters that differentiate us in the framework of the international fine arts scene. Thus, the Greek art fair would become fully competitive on an equal footing.Domestically, the goal is to provide creative artists -their work and the overall environment that constitutes the visual arts scene- the aura that is their due. Among other things, this will help contemporary art reach a public which so far has stood on the sidelines.

La Biennale di Venezia 10.06-21.11.

The 52nd Intl. Art Exhibition, entitled Think with the Senses – Feel with the Mind. Art in the Present Tense, will run 10th June to 21st November, 2007. The international exhibition, set up in the Arsenale and in the Italian Pavilion at the Giardini, will present about a hundred artists from all over the world.

PRAGUEBIENNALE until 16.09

Now in its third year, PRAGUEBIENNALE re-launches itself once more. Through a vast display of both recent and past works (from painting and photography to performance and installation art) this year's edition aims to explore and pinpoint the most significant aspects of Central European art. The show displays works by artists young and old, new and affirmed, as well as covering the very movements that shaped the sixties and seventies. Special exhibitions have been dedicated to Czech minimalism and Slovak actionism, which, hitherto, have not been documented on an international level. Following upon the success new artists have achieved after participating in 'Expanded Painting' (PRAGUEBIENNALE veritably 'baptised' or, so to speak, 'consecrated' Andro Wekua, Matthias Weischer, Dana Schutz, Tal R, Victor Man and Wilhelm Sasnal), Expanded Painting 2, will present twenty emerging European artists. There will be a special focus on the 'School of Cluj' in Romania, which, after Leipzig and Dresden, is proving to be a veritable goldmine of contemporary painters. Moreover, the fair pays homage to three seminal artists: Above all, however, the true stars of PRAGUEBIENNALE3 are indeed the very cultures and minor stories of Central Europe.

Art Moscow 16-20.05.

XI International Art Fair ART MOSCOW will be held in the Central House of Artists from 16 to 20 May, 2007. Since 1996, every spring owners of galleries, trustees, critics, theoreticians, art historians, artists, judges and collectors of modern art from all over the world gather at this forum of modern art to turn it into a hearth and home of the capital’s cultural life. During the eleven years of its existence ART MOSCOW has proved itself to be the most effective market ground of contemporary art on the Russia’s art scene that affords maximum opportunity for implementing cultural and commercial ideas. The success of ART MOSCOW arises from its professional adequacy to the present moment of development of modern culture in Russia. ART MOSCOW Fair is the place where one can not only get acquainted with art trends of current interest but also invest capital to one’s advantage. The high quality level of gallery expositions at the fair is a result of the work of the Expert Council bringing together leading Russian and foreign owners of galleries, theoreticians and art historians. It includes Marat Gelman (Marat Guelman Gallery, Moscow), Volker Diehl (Volker Diehl Gallery, Berlin), Hans Knoll (Knollgallery, Vienna-Budapest), Aidan Salakhova (Aidan Gallery, Moscow), Elena Selina (XL Gallery, Moscow). In 2007, 72 galleries from 15 countries will take part in the fair. They are Russia, Italy, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Hungary, Latvia, England, Luxemburg, Sweden, United States, Finland, Ukraine and Serbia. Traditionally, works of classics of the world contemporary art and most popular artists of recent years will be exhibited in the stalls. This year, together with the galleries that have proved their substantiality in the international art-scene, there will be young institutes that have just started their activities but already managed to show up in various art projects. The Zone of the Young is represented by such galleries as ZEH and Kiev Fine Art (Kiev, Ukraine), as well as Glance (Turin, Italy), RX and Studio MAC (Paris, France). ART MOSCOW is coming up to the world level as regards organizing various arrangements around the main event such as presentations, discussions and informal meetings making a comfortable and creative milieu that contributes to exchanging experience and working out plans for the future. Traditionally, the fair lays stress not only on commercial issues but also performs as a Kulturträger. Year by year, its non-commercial projects are gaining in weight and qualify for museum quality. In 2007, a vast program of accompanying art events will be carried out as a part of the fair. Based on international experience ART MOSCOW starts a new project for works that have the size or technical implementation not suitable to be exhibited in the stalls of the art fair. «Non Format» Project is to change the routine of exhibiting works of art exclusively in the stalls and offers an alternative platform for their demonstration to the galleries. The 2007 fair’s program includes a set of lectures on investments into the art; a personal exposition of the winners of Black Square, a national modern art award; an exhibition from the private collection of Alexandr Smuzikov; a program of performances of French artist Tristan Favre and Russian artists Ivan Razumov and Dmitry Fine. Besides, the fair’s concurrent program unites various art events on Moscow’s other exhibition grounds.

The Participants:
AMT Gallery (Milan, Italy), Anna Nova Art Gallery (Saint Petersburg, Russia), Asa Art Group (Saint Petersburg, Russia), Atelier Karas Gallery (Kiev, Ukraine), Bereznitsky Gallery Kiev-Berlin (Ukraine, Germany), Volker Diehl Gallery (Berlin, Germany), Burkhard Eikelmann Gallery (Duesseldorf, Germany), Forsblom Gallery (Helsinki, Finland), Gallery 45 (Nikolaev, Ukraine), Gary Tatintsian Gallery Inc. (Moscow, Russia), Glance Gallery (Turin, Italy), Haus Schneider Uschi Kolb Gallery (Karlsruhe, Germany), Houses of Art (Hague, Netherlands), Image Furini Arte Contemporanea (Arezzo, Italy), Iragui Gallery (Paris, France), Karenina Gallery (Vienna, Austria), Kiev Fine Art (Kiev, Ukraine), Knollgallery Vienna-Budapest (Austria, Hungary), Lumas (Berlin, Germany), Gallery D'Luxemburg - Nosbaum&Reding Art Contemporain (Luxemburg), Studio MAC (Paris, France), Mark Hachem Gallery (Paris, France), Noah Gallery (Augsburg, Germany), NT Art Gallery (Bologna, Italy), GAM Gallery Obrist (Essen, Germany), Orel Art Gallery (Paris, France), Pack Gallery (Milan, Italy), Paperworks Gallery (Moscow, Russia), Partner Project Gallery (Moscow, Russia), pop/off/art (Moscow, Russia), Ram Radioartemobile (Rome, Italy), Ravenscourt Galleries (London, England), Rebecca Hossack Gallery (London, England), Riga Gallery (Riga, Latvia), Leonhard Ruethmueller Contemporary Art (Basel, Switzerland), RX Gallery (Paris, France), Schuebbe Project Gallery (Duesseldorf, Germany), Stefan Stux Gallery (New-York, USA), VP Studio (Moscow, Russia), WAM (Moscow, Russia), Wetterling Gallery (Stockholm, Sweden), XL Gallery (Moscow, Russia), Zvono Gallery (Belgrade, Serbia), Aidan Gallery (Moscow, Russia), Art Strelka Projects (Moscow, Russia), Arka Gallery (Vladivostok, Russia), Vmeste Gallery (Moscow, Russia), Vostochnaya Gallery (Moscow, Russia), Elena Vrublevskaya Gallery (Moscow, Russia), Marat Guelman Gallery (Moscow, Russia), Gertsev Gallery (Moscow, Russia), Glaz Gallery (Moscow, Russia), ABC Gallery (Moscow, Russia), D137 Gallery (Saint Petersburg, Russia), Polina Lobachevskaya Gallery (Moscow, Russia), Khankhalaev Gallery (Moscow, Russia), E.K.Artbureau (Moscow, Russia), Kovcheg Gallery (Moscow, Russia), Krokin Gallery (Moscow, Russia), Marina Gisich Gallery (Saint Petersburg, Russia), MAR’S Gallery (Moscow, Russia), Pan-Dan Gallery (Moscow, Russia), Pervaya Gallery (Makhachkala, Dagestan, Russia), Regina Gallery (Moscow, Russia), Roza Azora Gallery (Moscow, Russia), RuArts (Moscow, Russia), Dmitriy Semenov Gallery (Saint Petersburg, Russia), Sterkh Gallery (Surgut, Russia), Triumph Gallery (Moscow, Russia), Fine Art Gallery (Moscow, Russia), ZEH Gallery (Kiev, Ukraine), Yakut Gallery (Moscow, Russia).

In the frame of ART MOSCOW art fair they have planned a number of dedicated events (read more on them in the fair’s program), as well as exhibitions and special projects.

Kommunalka (Shared Appartments). Seven famous Russian artists will share one apartment during the work of the fair. Living together they will have to fulfill a series of incentive tasks targeted at releasing their creative resources and liberating them as individuals. For several days they will be “cut off from the world” in the Central House of Artists, the most appropriate space for artists. As in any other self-esteemed reality-show they will be visited by famous guests, and every day the stringent jury (including guests of the fair) will come to a decision “who of the inhabitants must leave the project.”

Shargorod. The First Landing. The exhibition shows selected works of the art created during the Art-Mestechko/Shargorod International Festival of Modern Art that was held in a small provincial town Shargorod in the Ukraine in August 2006. The Festival was interesting first and foremost as regards its genre that could be named as “the art descent genre.” It had a new and interesting form of a street festival incidentally making the town citizens both spectators and subjects of modern art. From this point of view the phenomenon of the Shargorod Festival went far beyond familiar and dull “field exhibition” practice and became the manifestation of a new variant or rather a new format of public art becoming a bold attempt to comprehend and express the substance of the provincial town milieu the popular capital art is unfamiliar with.

Igor’s Mania. Glyuklya and Tsaplya. The Found Clothes Factory. In 2007, Glyuklya and Tsaplya, women artists from Saint Petersburg and participants in the Factory of Found Clothes Project, became winners of the Black Square, a national modern art award. Their film “Three Mothers and Children's Choir” cut to the hearts of the most jury members. The art of TV “documentality”, that has successfully disarmed not to say eliminated quite a number of works of art in recent years, was overcome for the benefit of high theatricality and thanks to that art survived in this case. In Igor’s Mania, their new project, that Glyuklya and Tsaplya present at ART MOSCOW; the artists continue to work with the art of “documentality”. Glyuklya and Tsaplya say: “This exhibition is a portrait of aberration. The aberration that there is no equality in relations among people. If there is no understanding there is no pleasure in recognizing ourselves in other people, there is no pleasure of understanding that we are different, there is no justice and there is no love. Such a nightmare comes from time to time to all of us living on earth when we hide ourselves in the corner, lock our room and then it becomes impossible to move to eternal life.” Beyond the Sound. This project is the result of artist Yuri Kalendarev’s work with “granite, environmental art and light projects - Sound Plates. The visual effect of the sculpture becomes in this project an insignificant aspect compared with the "hidden voice"of the reverberant sculpture. In a sense these sounding sculptures are just “devices” to listen to silence. Their substance transcends the Sound and people cooperating with them broaden their consciousness.” And Just Enjoy Being/Meat. Installations and performances of French artist Tristan Favre and Russian artists Ivan Razumov and Dmitry Fine are an interaction of the sculpture composition and the sound. Tristan Favre’s project is a composition with a hundred plates illustrating mass culture in France. The plates are very well suited to demonstrate likes and dislikes of particular society. They are also used to preserve the precious image because of their decorative style and historical aspect, they depict political views and they are souvenirs keeping reminiscences as well.