11 April–28 September 2014
Opening: Friday 11 April, 7pm
Lecture: Michal Rovner, 11 April, 8pm
Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu in Torun
Waly gen. Sikorskiego 13
87-100 Torun
Poland
arena.csw.torun.pl
csw.torun.pl
Artists: Aderemi Adegbite, Manolis Anastasakos & Alexandros Vasmoulakis, Mirosław Bałka, Guy Ben-Ner, Joseph Beuys, Victor Ehikhamenor, Ninar Esber, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Edy Ferguson, Dor Guez, Chaja Hertog & Nir Nadler, Adelita Husni-Bey, Jannis Kounellis, Oliver Laric, Cristina Lucas, Maha Maamoun, Jumana Manna & Sille Storihle, Jasmina Metwaly, Gustav Metzger, Avi Mograbi, Anna Moreno, Ciprian Mureşan & Gianina Cărbunariu, Ima-Abasi Okon, Itamar Rose, Roee Rosen, Michal Rovner, Justyna Scheuring, Ruti Sela & Maayan Amir, Marinella Senatore, Katharina Sieverding, Łukasz Surowiec, Adrian Tranquilli, Zbyszko Trzeciakowski, Adejoke Tugbiyele, Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor, Andrzej Wasilewski, Wooloo, Zafos Xagoraris
Curated by: Dobrila Denegri
Screening programs curated by Antonia Alampi, Jude Anogwih, Sergio Edelsztein, Katerina Gregos
Annex: exhibitive program The Silence of Marcel Duchamp Is Overrated curated by Piotr Lisowski
“In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’” George Orwell’s words sound still very current and truthful, especially if related to the last two decades. From the fall of the Berlin Wall to the crash of the World Trade Center up to the global financial crisis, life is becoming increasingly more subjected to the influence of the politics on a planetary scale. Art is both driving and documenting this upheaval. It is looking for new models of social transformation, but it is also creating space for reflection and discussion. Exactly on this premises is based Arena—a project which intends to function not just as an exhibition, as a set for dynamic program of screenings of video works, which today diffuse and channel artistic messages in the most massive way, as well as a platform for lectures, meetings and discussions which will involve international curators as well as participating artists and guest-lecturers from Poland.
Exhibitive project Arena takes the work and the artistic persona of Joseph Beuys as the point of departure. Being a personification the artist in it’s role of a demiurge, a teacher, an activist as well as “public worker” in the broadest sense of the term, Beuys is referential figure whose legacy still matters when question of political and social engagement of art is razed. The title of the exhibition refers to his piece Arena (Where Would I Have Got if I Had Been Intelligent!), which marks a shift in his own work as an artist and an activist.
Departing from Beuys’s Arena and it’s inherent (un)documentary and unfixed nature, the exhibition itself will develop through discursive and changeable format, presenting the work of contemporary artists who address the question of art’s (artist’s) place within broader social and political arena. In this sense Arena indicates the thematic frame which this exhibition takes, as a starting point in order to pose the questions: In what way art deals with social contingencies and current political conflicts and how it reflect moments of crisis. In a brother sense, an arena is an archetypical image that alludes to the spectacularization of violence and theatralization of conflict, notions that transposed in our current time imply reflection about hyper-mediated reality and way in which mass-media create/represent history through the image.
More info
Taking the form of an exhibition within an exhibition in a space especially designed by Uglycute will be shown four screening programs curated by Antonia Alampi (Italy / Egypt), Jude Anogwih (Nigeria), Sergio Edelsztein (Israel) and Katerina Gregos (Greece / Belgium), all correlated thematically to the question of the engagement of/through art, and art’s ability to deal with issues of history, memory, and identity raised in the moments and places in which ideological and religious convictions, or economical and political interests collided.
Screening program
European Night of Museums: 16–17 May: free entrance for special programs of lectures, encounters and screenings
Press kit and images in high- and low-res available here.
For more info, contact Kasia Toczko: katarzyna.toczko [at] csw.torun.pl / T +48 666 871 624
