MIRRAGES XXXV
High Expectations from documenta 14 in Athens: There aren’t many times that you’re fighting with yourself not to enter into a dialogue on issues that know their course from their beginning to the end, although occasionally your friends and collaborators are provoking you through friendly chats and discussions.
I belong to the category of people, who they don’t have illusions and desires, I count on my strengths, for that reason I do not get disappointed. Documenta is one the most important exhibitions for contemporary art all over the world. Documenta 14 brought in the art world of Athens high expectations, desires, passions and feuds, although the magnitude of the institution its course in Athens will be the one that we all know…
Nothing will change on the existing art map of Athens, don’t get discouraged under these conditions, exactly the same would happen in any other city for example in Paris or Madrid. Metaxourgeio will never become the new Mitte, exactly as Koumoundourou never transformed to Marais (I feel very sorry for those who believe that and founded in this area). This is because Greek artists are not indigenous and didn’t roll out the red carpet for documenta 14, as Cathryn Drake says at her Article, but someone must remind her that: The red carpet is for Hollywood Stars, not for artists and experts in contemporary art and that the annual march on the U.S.A. Embassy on November 17, is not an anarchist march, exactly as someone has to explain to Stephanie Bailey the significance of November 17, 1973, is the victory of democracy in Greece.
What it is really needed is a more groundbreaking and dynamic attitude of Greek Artists with Biting Artworks (this is what enemies and friends from abroad are awaiting from us all these years of the crisis). For now, we are waiting until the opening in Athens, we are very sure that Adam Szymczyk’s curating will be very intersting, but the Athens participation in Documenta is a contrived chess game.
Art Cologne: For our magazine the most important art event the of month is Art Cologne Art Fair 2017. Now into its 51th edition, after its historical beginnings as Kunstmarkt Köln ’67, Art Cologne is still one of the most important art fairs in the world. Art Cologne presents the most varied offering segments, including the Galleries Section with modern and postwar art and extending to the modern and contemporary art of established galleries. This also includes the New Positions Section, a sponsorship program that makes it possible for young artists to present their works in their own promotional booths next to the stands of their gallery owners. In addition to this, with the Neumark Section, Art Cologne 2017 presents the central platform for young galleries that have existed for no more than 10 years.
The Film Cologne Section is dedicated to the medium of moving image and was introduced at Art Cologne three years ago. With the special exhibition “A Goth Life”, this year’s edition of Art Cologne will show a compilation of artwork editions curated by and selected from Daata Editions. “A Goth Life” is a selection of artist works that, when compiled together, create a composite tale of our joyously soulless, self-reflective, insular, tension and angstridden times. The use of the internet is our guide, confidante, entertainment, mirror, window and general outlet, which has created an alternative social reality, with artists commentating on and providing a contemporary anthropology for this coming of age. This will play throughout the days of the art fair on a repeated cycle. Daata has also curated a selection of artists’ longer works and features to be played at specific times each day of the fair.
The 2017 Art Cologne Prize goes to Prof. Günter Herzog, scientific head of Zentralarchiv des Internationalen Kunsthandels (Central Archive of the International Art Trade – ZADIK) since 2002, ZADIK is the only research archive in the world that specialises in collecting and preserving documents and information from the art market. Prof. Günter Herzog took a doctoral degree and qualified as a professor at the University of Cologne, where he has been teaching the cultural and social history of art, as well as the history of the art trade since 1998, and where he was named an adjunct professor in 2008. Under the aegis of Prof. Günter Herzog, ZADIK became an interface between the art business and the science of art. Its cooperative ventures with the documenta archive in Kassel, the documentation centre for contemporary art in Vienna or the Guggenheim Foundation in New York have resulted in international recognition of the ZADIK. The prize will be awarded in the presence of invited guests on Wednesday, 26/4/2017 at 10:00 a.m. in the historic city hall of Cologne.
A supporting program of exhibition openings and events in Museums and Institutions throughout the Rhineland, make Art Cologne one of the events of this year in Germany that you shouldn’t miss (!)
Good Month(!)
Efi Michalarou
1/4/17