Syndicate: MSE-exhibitions

[Inke Arns <inke@snafu.de>]

MSE-exhibitions

?kuc Gallery, Stari trg 21, 1
1000 Ljubljana, phone/fax.: +386 1 251 65 40
drustvo.skuc@guest.arnes.si


22 June ?16 July: Up to You! ? �gnes Eperjesi, Gábor Gerhes, Tamás
Komoróczky, Kriszti Nagy, Hajnal Németh, Dezsõ Szabó, András Szigeti, Csaba
Uglár (Budapest et. al.), curated by Barnabás Bencsik 

20 July ? 13 August: Psychodelic ? Absolutno (Novi Sad), Department für
öffentliche Erscheinungen (Munich), G.R.A.M. (Graz), �gnes Szépfalvi &
Csaba Nemes (Budapest), curated by Anton Lederer & Margarethe Makovec
 
17 August ?10 September: What Am I Doing Here? ? Maja Bajevic (Paris,
Sarajevo), Danica Dakic (Düsseldorf, Sarajevo), ?ejla Kameric (Sarajevo),
Damir Nik?ic (Sarajevo), Rachel Rossner (Sarajevo), Neboj?a ?eric-?oba
(Amsterdam, Sarajevo), curated by Lejla Hod?iæ

14 September ? 8 October: Small Country for Big Vacation ? Sandro �ukiæ
(Zagreb), Alan Florincic (Rijeka), Andreja Kuluncic (Zagreb), Renata Poljak
(Split), Sandra Sterle (Amsterdam, Zagreb), Slaven Tolj (Dubrovnik),
Aleksandar Ilic: Weekend Art Project in collaboration with Ivana Keser &
Tomislav Gotovac (Zagreb), curated by Ana Devic & Nata?a Ilic

2001: MSE-Exhibition Project of Galeria Neon (Bologna), curated by Gino
Gianuzzi



Up to You!


Featuring the artists:
Ã?gnes Eperjesi
Gábor Gerhes
Tamás Komoróczky
Kriszti Nagy
Hajnal Németh
Dezsõ Szabó
András Szigeti
Csaba Uglár

Curated by Barnabás Bencsik


After a long period mostly dominated by installations and site-specific
works, in the last few years photography and video have gradually become
the most significant media of the younger generations of artists on the
Budapest art scene. For these artists, the handycam is an easy and
accessible instrument allowing them to work independently, and their visual
language ? a remix of MTV clips, junk-movies and low-budget experiments ?
is a device for expressing the disoriented identity in the new society
where moral values and social patterns are created and ruled mostly by the
global market-economy and multinational trend-makers. Highly sophisticated
images of life-styles spread by fashion magazines, various intellectual and
art productions of different sub-cultures, music channels, party- and
techno-scenes are the customary sources of these video pieces in which
fiction and reality, personal identity and media-stars? virtual
personalities mix one with another and dissolve into new types of narrative. 

In these works, photography is subject to different kinds of manipulation,
from the PhotoShop effects to the reconstructed fake views of the everyday
ambience. The images in these photographs are never original. The pictures
always refer to already existing images. The artists use standardised
images from the image banks of advertisement agencies, or create very
similar compositions inserting their own bodies in them. Sometimes they
even cannibalise banal images from the packages of mass-produced goods. The
images ? be it photographs, computer prints, or executed in any other
medium ? are always playing with the ambiguity documentation/ manipulation
of the digitised photography, and in every piece the artists intended to
redefine the notion of this traditional medium.



PSYCHODELIC

Featuring the artists:
Department for Public Appearances (Munich) 
Apsolutno (Novi Sad)
G.R.A.M. (Graz) 
�gnes Szépfalvi & Csaba Nemes (Budapest)
 
Curated by Anton Lederer & Margarethe Makovec 


PSYCHODELIC focuses on the tendency in contemporary art production where
artists try to work thematically on socially relevant structures. The
structures that currently constitute society give artists the impetus for
reflection and analysis. In many cases, artistic statements contain harsh
criticism. 

In both a very specific and a literal sense, PSYCHODELIC deals with
phenomena, such as mentioned above, which bear a certain
"consciousness-extending" function. This should be understood in the sense
that our consciousness is extended through additional insight and not in
some esoteric sense. The aforementioned practices of art, however, do not
correspond with scientific methods and do not offer spectacular results.
They are characterised through a concentrated praxis, confronting us with
phenomena and processes that are included in our world of daily encounters
and which only stand out through their separation, i.e. the extraction of
this everyday context. Further, there is transplantation into a different,
not-specific context, especially by the means of exaggeration. It is this
exaggeration ? often quite ironic ? that leads to psychodelic effects, and
a certain context suddenly seems self-evident.

We want to establish another sub-group, on which the exhibition will focus.
You could overwrite the sentence: "There are quite a lot of things people
can think of to be amused." The world of daily experiences is thus limited
to entertainment. Either you take the existing chances with pleasure, or
you have to kill your time. One of the great philosophers once said: "How
many things you don't need for a living." Nevertheless, there are many
things and acts we cherish. Thus it doesn't seem very likely that once they
did not exist.



What Am I Doing Here?


Featuring the artists: 
Maja Bajevic 
Danica Dakic
?ejla Kameric 
Damir Nik?ic 
Rachel Rossner 
Neboj?a ?eric-?oba 

Curated by Lejla Hodzic 

"Few of us brought up in contemporary North American society really know
our place. Displacement is the factor that for many defines a colonized or
expropriated place. Even if we can locate ourselves, we haven't necessarily
examined our place in, or our actual relationship to, that place."		
Lucy Lippard, ?The Lure of the Local"

The "What Am I Doing Here?" exhibition was conceived over the past few
months, through conversations with artists, as a work in progress. The
works that originated in this time are concerned with various dilemmas that
confront the artists. Damir Nik?iæ succinctly expressed the basic question,
which each participant poses in his/her own way: "What am I doing here?" 

The questions of one's own position, perspective, and place, and one's
connection with the problems of identity, language, nationality and
country, are underlined by the consequences of the war in Bosnia.



?SMALL COUNTRY FOR BIG VACATION" - EXHIBITION PROJECT

Advertising message used in Croatian tourist campaign in the middle of the
1990s

Featuring the artists:
Sandro �ukiæ (Zagreb)
Alan Florinèiæ (Rijeka)
Aleksandar Iliæ: Weekend Art Project 
In collaboration with Ivana Keser & Tomislav Gotovac (Zagreb)
Andreja Kulunèiæ (Zagreb)
Renata Poljak (Split)
Sandra Sterle (Amsterdam, Zagreb)
Slaven Tolj (Dubrovnik)

Curated by Ana Deviæ & Nata?a Iliæ

In a broader context, the exhibition project aims to explore the phenomenon
of contemporary tourism, as well as the aesthetics and iconography of
travelling. During the last decades, contemporary art has been recognised
as an important and unavoidable factor of tourist offer. Economy, tourism
and culture are closely related parts that form the definition of national
identity. Croatia belongs to the circle of countries whose external
identity has been based ? more or less successfully ? on tourism. During
the 1960s, Croatia initiated large investments in the tourist
infrastructure and offer. During the 1990s, the identity of tourist country
has failed and acquired slightly paradoxical air. Not only high level of
risk, war damages and economic crisis, but also the strong centralisation,
has been imposing unfavourable economic terms for further initiatives. The
phenomenon of travelling, and various advertising strategies that go with
it, is being explored from various perspectives. Travelling as a process, a
transition, a state in-between; it is multi-layered, we see it as a
symbolic and private experience, but also as something banal, as
consumption and mass entertainment. Art works question this theme from
different positions.


2001: MSE-exhibition project of Galleria Neon (Bologna), cureted by Gino
Gianuzzi

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