Prague Biennale

The peripheries become the center

Until today artistic-cultural supremacy belonged mostly to New York and London. All the other major cities (Paris, Berlin, Cologne, Rome, Milan, Madrid, and Tokyo) were considered almost peripheries of the cultural empire. As in the Renaissance, art blossomed during the reign of the Medici in Florence and at the court of the Pope in Rome. Contemporary art and visual culture  (advertising, publishing, cinema, fashion) came to prominence in New York or in the United States, attracted by a strong economy that believed in art and culture first. The art system that we know today — formed by museums, artists, dealers, collectors, the media, and the market all working together to present a high-quality product — was possible due to the engagement of the Big Apple as its nucleus. New York is populated with great institutions imbued with the spirit and organizational tactics of the great multinational companies, investing men, energies, and funds to advertise art and the artists and make them popular (and the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim later became models for the Western World).
These new ideas and the potential of big capital turn the attention of an elite towards art during the post-war period. Art is now part of everyday life, and receives regular media attention, and is in the limelight together with pop music and fashion. But this is not an ephemeral phenomenon like most trends in culture. Art is now a phenomenon of costume and lifestyle.
Art-collecting provides an unexpected prestigious and social role as never before. For the very first time owning a Jasper Johns or an Andy Warhol gives more credit and visibility than a Ferrari or a flat on Park Avenue.
Restaurants, parties, and big events do everything in their power to invite superstar guests such as Andy Warhol, Richard Serra, Julian Schnabel, Francesco Clemente, and Jeff Koons.
The great Japanese stylist Rei Kawakubo (Comme de Garçons), the woman who impressed an epochal turning point in fashion at the beginning of the '80s, offers the catwalk to models and also to good, famous, and beautiful artists. Vanity Fair and Vogue dedicate huge articles, interviews, and covers to Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Julian Schnabel, Francesco Clemente, and Matthew Barney. New York managed to turn art from a solipsistic and elitist fact into a phenomenon of actuality and worldly pleasures. The artists are transformed from castaways to figures endowed with charisma and a strong influence on culture and the media instead. All this without spoiling the quality of art, but rather by simply improving its fruition.
All of these developments took place in New York at the beginning of the '60s, when the most interesting, transgressive, and restless artists moved with energy, culture, and vitality in New York, at the center of an American culture in full transformation. In this melting pot of different cultures (European, Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Indian, amongst others), traditions, influences, and roots are absorbed, connected, and transformed, giving life to that cosmopolitan and international culture that expressed so much sex appeal and success. New York transformed art into a visible and requested product. The large-scale art market with enormous figures was born here. In Europe the only city that managed to do the same was London — although without the same determination and capacity. Art made in New York rages and conquers the Western world, leaving a mark in the culture of every country.
Berlin, Milan, Paris, Madrid, Prague, Warsaw, and all the other cities of the world begin to use the same modes and parameters to deal with the culture, but the big events, the birth and raise of the great post-war artists was in New York and London. That know-how is now exported, and all the small and big centers are beginning to adopt the same techniques of penetration and persuasion used in New York. The end of the millennium seems to undermine the supremacy of the U.S., in favor of the provinces and peripheries that aim to become the stars of today's art.
The PRAGUE BIENNALE testifies to this transition and transfer of powers.
Although New York and London keep playing a primary role, they're not the only protagonists on the cultural scene.
The PRAGUE BIENNALE, the first great international exhibition that aims to measure itself with the Venice Biennale and Documenta in Kassel, is also the first big art event in Eastern Europe. Never before has a country or a city attempted to set up an exhibition of such relevance and engagement. The PRAGUE BIENNALE represents the potential of the peripheries to become protagonists, to document a revolt at the door. Even more, the change has already come. The new art comes from unexpected places like Central and South America and Africa... and of course the old Europe.

The Prague Biennale announces itself as the major art event of the year, with 30 international curators and about 200 artists from the world over, marking the difference from all the other big international exhibitions.
Around 200 young and emerging artists from every corner of the world will be selected by the most influential curators (or artists acting as curators) to create a pluralistic vision of contemporary art today.
This is not one of those biennials in which the selections and the opinions are determined by the eyes of one or two curators, but is rather a real meeting of cultures and attitudes from every center and the periphery.
A 500-page, full-color catalogue will document the proceedings, and will also serve as the virtual extension of the exhibition, creating an anthology of new creativity and emerging talents.
A huge survey realized with a low budget (in comparison with the big exhibitions), the Prague Biennale has pushed its organizers to face amazing challenges, but these constraints represent a move towards new horizons, new solutions, and new exhibiting philosophies.

Helena Kontova & Giancarlo Politi

List of curators

Judith Angel (Hungary)
B+B (Sarah Carrington and Sophie Hope, Great Britain)
Lino Baldini and Gyonata Bonvicini (Italy)
Luca Beatrice (Italy)
Adam Budak  (Poland)
Joshua Decter  (Usa)
Laurence Dreyfus (France)
Andrea Di Stefano (Italy)
Jacob Fabricius (Denmark)
Lauri Firstenberg (Usa)
Lavinia Garulli (Italy)
Julieta Gonzalez (Venezuela)
Francesca Jordan and Shu Yeng (China)
Dorothée Kirsch (Iceland)
Michal Kolecek (Czech Republic)
Helena Kontova (Italy)
Sofia Hernandez (New York)
Jens Hoffmann (Germany)
Ekaterina Lazareva  (Russia)
Charlotte Mailler (Switzerland)
Raimundas Malasauskas (Lithuania)
Chus Martinez (Spain)
Greogor Muir (Great Britain)
Neil Mulholland (Scotland)
Peter Nagy (India)
Marco Scotini (Italy)
Francesco Vezzoli (Italy)

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The proposed Greek artists for the Prague Biennale 1, by the Deste Foundation, reflect a variety of languages and strategies, a mesh of creative disciplines.
Although, contemporary Greek art seems to have a voice, which is becoming increasingly audible on the international art scene, the selection does not aim to make a dexterous statement about national identity or form a mini group show.
Athanasios Argianas, Nikos Papadimitriou and Vassiliea Stylianidou function by definition in the context of various existing dichotomies of artistic production. Two out of the three are currently living and working outside Greece! Argianas, in London (the indisputable centre of art) and Stylianidou in Berlin (the reclaimed centre of art). All three, like most artists of their generation, have been students in several Centers of Art.
The issue of artists choosing to live and work abroad gives rise to various reactions and emotions regarding the problematic position of artists from Central and Eastern Europe. Artists, who live and work abroad rather than in their native city or region, are usually liable to complex feelings as well as alienation. The concept itself is fluid and open to personal interpretation, and is linked to questions of borders and their transgression, geographical hierarchies all in the context of the periphery and the centre, and the politics of migration.
    That was and, in some respect, still is quite a common practice among Greek artists as at times it has been awkward to articulate a position for artistic production and Greece has often operated outside urban centres or was disconnected from the commercial aspects of art production.
The Deste Foundation’s activities (exhibitions, Deste Prize, Greek Artists Archive, publications etc) both contribute and actively challenge the national and subsequently international, discourse surrounding the practice of contemporary art.
The Foundation not only explores challenging and intellectually inquisitive contemporary art practice, but also offers a unique context in which contemporary Greek artists can find an infrastructure to support, promote and showcase their work in their country and abroad.

In this sense, Athanasios Argianas’ ‘Proposal For a Mobile Plateau’ which functions as a sort of nomadic object, Nikos Papadimitriou’s obsessive drawings of his house and Vassiliea Stylianidou’s fictitious ‘City A <1>’, in which absolute security reigns, are presented as open-ended questions bringing fresh perspectives into contemporary Greek art practice.
Xenia Kalpaktsolgou
Deste Foundation