4th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art
September 18, 2013- January 31, 2014
General title: “Old Intersections- Make it New»
Central Exhibition title: “Everywhere but Now”
Parallel Exhibitions organised by the “5 Museums’ Movement in Thessaloniki”:
State Museum of Contemporary Art
Exhibition title: “The Costakis collection and the Russian avant-garde. 100 since the collector’s birth”
Curators: Maria Tsantsanoglou, Angeliki Charistou
Venue: Moni Lazarist;on
Duration: April 5, 2013-January 31, 2014
2013 is an anniversary year for the State Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki-Greece, since it has been 100 years since the collector George Costakis was born in Moscow. On this occasion the SMCA holds a big exhibition, with over 250 artworks from the famous Russian avant-garde collection, dedicated to the collector himself, a large part of whose collection belongs to the Museum. The other part was donated by the collector himself in 1977 to the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. The Costakis collection is the largest collection of Russian avant-garde art (1900-1930) and has a great mobility in exhibitions all over Europe and the USA. It is a big presentation of the Costakis collection and the archive which follows and shows the collector’s gaze and method, through monographic artists’ presentations, enriched by guided tours, educational programs, talks, book presentations and lessons on the Russian avant- garde period.
State Museum of Contemporary Art
Temporary Exhibition title: Tradition-Reversal
Curator: Katerina Koskina, Yannis Bolis
Venue: Warehouse B1 (port area)
Duration: September 2013-December 2014
The exhibition consists of a selection from the contemporary art collections of the State Museum of Contemporary Art, being related to the tradition, the technical know-how and the sociopolitical reversals which have changed definitely the Mediterranean area during the last years.
Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki
Exhibition title: “Mediterranean palimpsests: three enigmas of decay and incorruption”
Curators: Evangelia Stefani, Angeliki Koukouvou, Themis Veleni
Venue: Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki
The exhibition invites us to a dialogue and communication two cultural derivatives of different eras of the same place. An ancient text, the earliest “book” written in the Greek alphabet in the Mediterranean, the Derveni papyrus, converses with two contemporary works of art, in the form of installation, by the artist Demetris Xonoglou, in two different units, in the atrium of the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki.
Museum of Byzantine Culture
Exhibition title: “The veneration of Saint Mamas in the Mediterranean: a traveller, border defender Saint.”
Curator: Agathoniki Tsilipakou
Venue: Museum of Byzantine Culture
The exhibition aims at presenting the unknown honouring of St. Mamas, through the art of the East and the West, emphasising mainly on Cyprus and Greece from the early Byzantine period. The exhibition showcases the places and temples of worship of St. Mamas, which acted as a communicative, religious and cultural contact network throughout the Mediterranean. For the first time, the objects of the exhibition present the establishment of the vibrant devotional traditions of the myrrh-streamer and healer Saint Mamas, who has been co-depicted in icons, co-worshipped and thus identified as Saint Demetrius, the patron of Thessaloniki. The close relationship and liturgical tradition of the two saints is an important aspect and further proof of Thessaloniki’s radiance.
Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art
Exhibition title: “The Mediterranean experience: The Mediterranean as a spatial paradigm for circulation of ideas and meaning”.
Venue: Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art
Duration: September- December 2013
Curator: Denys Zacharopoulos
Deputy Curators: Alexios Papazacharias, Maro Psyrra
This MMCA exhibition comprises more than 120 emblematic contemporary art works by Greek and foreign artists, who are negotiating the manifold concept of free public space. The Mediterranean is understood here, as spatial paradigm and structure in which the traditional notion of centre is substituted by the function of an “opposite side”, which gives place to communication and exchange. The exhibition explores systematically and for the first time, the formation of new cognitive and aesthetic categories as a topology of “The Mediterranean Experience”, within contemporary art, starting with Le Nouveau Réalisme and Arte Povera until the present times.
TeloglionFoundationofArt – AUTh
Exhibition title: “Vasso Katraki: Dialogue between Black and White”
Venue: Teloglion Foundation of Art – AUTh
Vasso Katraki was a leading Greek engraver. Her work, saturated by social and political dimensions, spread the ecumenical principles of Humanism and hence offered a fundamental reform to the art of engraving. Repeatedly awarded internationally, Vasso Katraki became a point of reference for Greek engravers.
The exhibition brings into light significant moments of her parcours through representative abstract engravings supplemented by matrices, the famous Gyaros pebbles and part of the Toni Spiteri’s archive to be unveiled. The public will have the opportunity to track the artistic development of an emblematic figure that uniquely linked the individual to the collective.
Other events of the main program
3rd Thessaloniki Performance Festival
Duration: October 15-19, 2013
Curator and Coordination: Eirini Papakonstantinou
This year’s festival will include live performances which will highlight the diverse elements that constitute the art of performance, master classes, and a workshop to be held a week before the opening of the Festival which will aim to broaden the relationship between performance and photography, as also its transition through the photographic lens. In addition, the Festival will include a conference, experimental electronic music concerts, screenings of video performances and tributes to two major art figures that throughout their longtime artistic trajectories, they excelled in the area of performance.
Young Artists’ Workshop of the 4th Thessaloniki biennale of Contemporary Art, in collaboration with the ACTION FIELD KODRA, (Municipality of Kalamaria)
Venue: State Museum of Contemporary Art (Warehouse B1, port)
Symposium
The theme of this year’s Biennale symposium will be linked again to the general title of the Biennale and subsequently to the Mediterranean area. At the same time, the symposium will be focused on the function of the archives and their practices in the contemporary art field.
Photo: Inci Eviner, Fluxes of Girls on Europe, 2010, Video projection, color, sound, Installation view and stills. Courtesy Galerie Nev, Istanbul and the artist