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Indepth Arts News:
"What is Important? 3rd Ars Baltica Triennial of Photographic Art"
2005-02-12 until 2005-04-17
Malmo Konsthall
Malmo, ,
SE Sweden
Ars Baltica is a forum for the cross-border cultural exchange in the
Baltic area. Working with the question and title What is Important?, the
curatorial team of the 3rd Ars Baltic Triennial of Photographic Art aims
to deepen the critical dialogue on art and photography between artists,
curators and institutions in the region.
The structural content of the project begins by looking at what is
important today for Baltic artists who use the photographic medium.
Etymologically, "important" is that which is valuable enough to be
"brought in", in other words, that which the individual or a community
searches out and selects for itself.
What is Important? Is not a thematic exhibition, but the works chosen do
relate a certain artistic attitude. While many artists were concerned with
establishing photography as art in the 90s, today, art with photography is
one of many artistic strategies. Artists avoid the single representative
image or play with it, include the performative and the narrative in their
work, and produce image kaleidoscopes or complexes. Photography is not
singled out as a specific medium, but is used by the artist, as others use
it. In other words, formal issues are less important than the artist‚s
attempt to extract segments of reality, import and appropriate them, and
communicate these to others.
Paradoxically enough, the artists in this exhibition combine an interest
in the apparently unimportant and the desire to evoke important
narratives. The most different forms of narrative in today‚s Baltic
photographic art are established around the following points of
crystallisation. On the one hand, there are the stories that deal with the
self, or where the public colliding with the private becomes an issue, and
in which subjective experience and playful narratives replace the focus on
the body typical of the 80s and 90s. On the other hand are the stories in
which locations around and beyond the self are a central issue, and where
the subjective importance of places supersedes the detached viewpoint on
sites, characteristic of the early 90s. Concentrating on the local, the
private, and the personal point of view, the artists attribute particular
importance to individual territories, not yet absorbed globally or
medially.
A catalogue with 160 pages and approx. 150 illustrations is available. The
publication in English is conceived as a discussion forum on art and
photography in the Baltic region, and encloses text contributions by the
artists as well as by Dorothee Bienert, Ekaterina Degot, Helena Demakova,
Lukasz Gorczyca, Lars Grambye, Jonas Ekeberg, Anders Härm & Hanno Soans,
Mika Hannula, Lolita Jablonskiene, Lars Bang Larsen, John Peter Nilsson,
Jonas Valatkevicius and Jan Verwoert.
artists in the exhibition
Knut Åsdam (NO), Bigert & Bergström (SE, Agnieszka Brzezanska (PL),
Aristarkh Chernyshev (RU), Oskar Dawicki (PL), Miklos Gaál (FIN), Ilkka
Halso (FIN), Isabell Heimerdinger (DE), Elsebeth Jørgensen (DK), Anne
Szefer Karlsen (NO), Eve Kask (EE), Joachim Koester (DK), Tatyana Liberman
(RU), Wiebke Loeper (DE), Wolfgang Plöger (DE), Arturas Raila (LT), Gatis
Rozenfelds (LV), Johanna Rylander (SE), Jari Silomäki (FIN), Florian
Slotawa (DE), Irma Stanaityte (LT)
curatorial team
Dorothee Bienert, Berlin; Lars Grambye, Malmö/Copenhagen; Lolita
Jablonskiene, Vilnius
Joachim Koester,
From the series: Bialowieza Forest, 2001
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