From Russia with Avant-garde
Yorgos
Karouzakis, Eleftherotypia, 11.08.2009
Contemporary art has long moved to the Russian constellation,
thanks to the talent of Russian artists and the patrons of art such as Stella
Kesaeva, founder of the Stella Art Foundation.
In September the Foundation is bringing forty five
works of renowned artists from its collection to Thessaloniki.
"Stella
Art", the famous Russian contemporary art foundation, a rising star in the
international art scene and an institution stating as its objective the
promotion of new Russian art, its holding its autumn event in Thessaloniki. More
than 45 works from the widely renown collection of the institution, headed by Russian
citizen Mrs. Stella Kesaeva, will be on show from September 18 to November 11 at
the National Bank's Educational Foundation (Vasilissis Olgas Str. 108). The presented
pieces will comprise an exhibition Subjective
Visions held under more general title Moscow - Thessaloniki 2009 in the context of the parallel program of the Second Thessaloniki
Contemporary Art Biennale. This season, more significant parts of the same collection
are also being exhibited at the Viennese
Kunsthistorisches Museum and the 53rd Venice Biennale.
Centerpiece
of the exhibition at the National Bank's Educational Foundation will also be a portrait
of Stella Kesaeva, the Foundation's president, painted by Alex Kats, representative
of the New York Pop Art. This "virtual" presence of Stella Kesaeva among
the works on show will allow her to play a role of the "lady of the house"
taking her guests on a tour of her collection. The exhibition features some
celebrities of international art, as well as Russian artists whose oeuvre is
widely known beyond the country's borders, including the reputed conceptualist Igor
Makarevich, who, in collaboration with his partner Elena Yelagina, works in a variety
of media: collage, photography, painting, graphics, book installation, etc. The
Thessaloniki exhibition
will present a series of his portraits recording a process of his gradual mummification.
The exhibition
will also feature a fragment of a text of the "progenitor" of conceptual
art Joseph Kosuth, kitsch photographs, golden figurines crafted by Oleg Kulik, the
enfant terrible of the Russian art who
became notorious for his "actions", in which he acted as a dog in
order to... better comprehend the nature of a beast. Besides, the viewers will
see some artwork from already familiar hands – mostly thanks to exhibitions already
held at the National
Contemporary Art
Museum – such as Ilya and Emilia and Kabakov, with
their graphics and video art created for a theatrical production
of Olivier Messiaen's opera Saint Francis
of Assisi.
Viewers will
be able to see inimitable works by provocative American photographic artist Robert
Mapplethorpe and photographs by New Yorker Spencer Tunick who became notorious for
his mass photo shootings of naked people, works by Russian authors Nikita Alexeyev,
Alexander Glinitsky, Dmitry Gutov and others. By arranging the artwork she received
at her disposal, exhibition curator Thalea Stefanidou attempted to answer the following
questions: How is an art work structured? How is a collection ‘built’? How is
the content of a collection restructured in relation to new spaces of its
reception?"
The program
of the Moscow-Thessaloniki 2009 exhibition
will be supplemented with various events to be announced later. The Subjective Visions project is conducted
by Stella Art Foundation in collaboration with the National Bank's Educational
Foundation, artBOX.gr and Thessaloniki Contemporary Art Biennale.
The non-commercial
Stella Art Foundation was founded in November 2004 at the initiative of Stella
Kesaeva. One of the Foundation's objectives is to institute a super-modern museum
to house its rich collection within the following ten years.
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