Axel Vervoordt in Conversation with Denis Maksimov
interview for Ocula [link]
Axel Vervoordt. Photo: Frederik Vercruysse.
The booth of Axel Vervoordt Company at Frieze Masters 2018 in London was hard to miss. Ancient Egyptian, Roman, and Near Eastern sculptures were placed in subtle, unimposing but mind-tickling dialogue with works by Niki De Saint Phalle, Takis, and Kazuo Shiraga, among others. Such pairings are not unusual for the Company, which comprises an art and antiques business and contemporary art gallery helmed by Boris Vervoordt, son of Axel Vervoordt, who has amassed an astonishing range of ancient, antique, fine, and contemporary art objects throughout his life.
Born in the Wilrijk district of Antwerp in 1947, Axel Vervoordt founded his art and antiques business at his home in 1969. Over the years, this family business has evolved into an international company also engaged in interior design. His close contact with contemporary artists resulted in the foundation of Axel Vervoordt Gallery in Antwerp in 2011, followed by the establishment of a Hong Kong space in 2014. The gallery’s focus is contemporary, and cites its philosophy as being ‘rooted in the Gutai and Zero movements and their exploration of the void.’ Vervoordt is a rare man: post-disciplinary but self-disciplined; intuitive, but methodological; contemplative, but focused. The first item he ever collected was a Flemish iron chest 'with an incredibly complicated lock system comparable to the work of Jean Tinguely’, and his approach to collecting links fluidly with his curatorial and art dealing practice. In 1969, Vervoodt purchased a private street adorned with 16th-century houses next to the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp, where he developed his antiques business. The Belgian aesthete went on to develop a number of architectural projects in Antwerp, namely Kanaal: a 19th-century industrial complex of buildings that he purchased in 1998 and which he transformed—with architecture practices Bogdan & Van Broeck, Coussée & Goris, and Stéphane Beel—into a collection of 98 apartments, 30 offices, an artisanal bakery, organic food market, and multi-use auditorium; along with the Axel Vervoordt Company offices, workshops, showrooms, and exhibition spaces. In 2000, Anish Kapoor’s monumental installation, At the Edge of the World (1998), was permanently installed in the space: a monumental fibreglass dome with a dense, red pigmented interior, whose 8-metre diameter looms from above.
In recent years, Vervoordt has developed a curatorial practice that was spearheaded in 2007, when he was invited by the Venetian Palazzo Fortuny to co-curate a decade-long series of exhibitions that addressed fundamental questions of human experience of art, science, and life in general. The sixth and final exhibition, Intuition (13 May–26 November 2017), which coincided with the 57th Venice Biennale and featured artists like André Breton, Joseph Beuys, Lucia Bru, Giorgio de Chirico, and Karel Appel, investigated how intuition has shaped art across different geographies, cultures, and generations.
Throughout the years, Vervoordt has nurtured a devout international clientele, for antiques, modern, and contemporary artworks. Vervoordt explains that his interests are motivated by a 'pursuit of universality’, a quality that pushes him to seek 'things that can ignite a new Renaissance and give body to the emptiness’, referring to the falsity of celebrity culture that reigns in the commercial contemporary art market. Under this pursuit, the dealer has shed light on a number of important art historical movements, including Gutai, the radical postwar Japanese group whose paintings and performances by members Jiro Yoshihara, Akira Kanayama, Saburo Murakami, Kazuo Shiraga, and Shozo Shimamoto signalled a turn in the creative expression of modern Japan.
In this conversation, Vervoordt discusses the key roles behind his many initiatives in the art world.
DM: You combine the roles of an art dealer, curator, collector, architect, educator, philanthropist, and urbanist, among others, in your work. How do you define yourself?
AV: People are more one-sided these days. To me all these activities come together as one pursuit: the search for universality. I love to discover the expression of universality in ancient art; it is like tracing the beginning of everything, but I am equally interested in contemporary art. I couldn’t live without abstract art, for example. My specialty is to make people happy within liveable and lovable environments, where—with the help of art and architecture—they want to live their whole lives. I make artists and the people around them happy—it all comes together eventually. That’s why most of my clients become friends for life; I make them discover things and make them discover themselves through art.
Do you still see abstract art as something new?
It is new in some sense, but it is also something that has existed already for thousands of years. Pieces of ancient Central Asian art, Egyptian art, and early Near Eastern art all look contemporary to me. They are timeless.
How did you become interested in the Zero artists?
I developed a passion for Zero a very long time ago. We became friends and this friendship remained very strong. I bought my first [Lucio] Fontana at the age of 21. Fontana often exhibited together with the German ZERO artists and can be considered as one of them. Conceptually, they are very close.
How did you discover the Gutai group?
It happened very recently, in 2005, during a trip to Japan where I met Gutai members from the first generation like Kazuo Shiraga and Sadamasa Motonaga, but also younger members like Sadaharu Horio and Yuko Nasaka. It was like a sudden, heavy, unbelievable connection. It was impossible to me that they were not known, so I did everything possible to promote their work and make them visible. In Artempo, the first exhibition we did in Venice, I showed several Gutai members to the international public.
What is it that draws you to movements initiated by artist groups such as Gutai and Zero? Do you decouple the aesthetics from their politics?
I am constantly searching. Art is a real force of philosophy, without politics and rules. It comes from genuine intuition. An artist acts as a portal of cosmic energy. It is not about the ego, nor is it about grand problems. In music, for instance, you have geniuses such as Mozart. He wrote music beyond himself, and it became divine even when he was addressing very normal, everyday aspects of life. He was activating the divine in the mundane.
Do you follow contemporary artists?
I love to discover new things—totally new things from which I can learn. But to me it is very important to know when the artist created the work in question. A lot of young artists reproduce works that have already been done in the sixties and seventies; there is too much copying around.
What does living with art mean to you?
For me it means living with teachers or friends—you wish to resemble them, and you like to be with them. Some of the works one collects might be rare objects, but if people only own rare things it becomes very boring. One needs to be surrounded by everyday, simple things to be inspired.
Do you see an explicit difference between 'the object’ and 'the thing’ in art?
I always like to look at art as if I were a child; I follow my intuition and think afterwards. I find and discover art as I would do with a living thing. I love Egyptian art, for example; for me it represents a frozen moment that is still living, it sort of makes time stop. Timelessness is very important for me in art and architecture. This universality brings everything together; it creates the feeling of oneness, which is crucial in everything I approach. Existentially, it is a universal formula.
One of the most interesting pieces of video art I’ve seen in years was featured in the exhibition Proportio (9 May–22 November 2015), which you curated at Palazzo Fortuny in Venice as part of the long-term collaboration with this institution. Atlante (2015) by Francesco Jodice features those elements of universality you’ve been talking about: the 2nd-century Roman sculpture Farnese Atlas from the Naples National Archeological Museum is the centre of a montage that bombards all the senses, but at the same time provides a feeling of harmony.
Yes, Atlante is very beautiful, moving, and heavy. In any an art piece for me, it is about a harmony in values; togetherness makes it much stronger.
What about its somewhat dystopian message? At one point, the video’s text reads, 'It’s not the end of the world but you can see it from here’.
I think things come as they come. 'The search’ is more about how to create the time that we need. For instance, sometimes I get astonished when I see the amount of plastic everywhere and the lack of respect for the nature and it really disturbs me. We have to teach people to love nature again.
In the series of exhibitions you worked on at Palazzo Fortuny—Intuition, 2017; Proportio, 2015; TAPIES. The eye of the artist, 2013; TRA. Edge of Becoming, 2011; In-finitum, 2009; Artempo—Where Time Becomes Art, 2007—you seem to approach the search of universality and harmony from multiple corners. How do you go about it?
Getting closer to understanding universality involves asking the right questions along the way. Having that approach is more important than finding answers, which is impossible anyway—one can never know. It is like going through a labyrinth. The philosophical side of these exhibitions was prepared during a full year. We involved more than eight people who worked in think tank salons with scientists, artists, and musicians. For example, in relation to the first exhibition in the series, Artempo, we posed questions like, 'What is time?’ 'What is zero?’ and 'What is the void?’. We needed to answer them to understand the art better. Preparing an exhibition of that scale takes me between two and four years; it’s a lot of work.
How did this series come about?
Before 2007, I had never curated an exhibition. I was 60 when I was first approached with the proposal to curate. I decided I would do the exhibition about our collections and the concept of time. I wanted to do it without neglecting the architecture of Palazzo Fortuny by not touching the old walls and placing the exhibition in the building alongside its history. Once a building is restored, the presence of its memory is gone. I wanted to prove it was the right approach. I hung very expensive paintings by Rauschenberg and Warhol next to a mirror I found and bought for nothing. And it all looked great.
What is the concept of value for you?
It’s like an authentic reaction that a child has. Sometimes I don’t know exactly what makes me look at an object—is it the art itself, the material it is made of, or the context of its presentation? I think intuition works in all ways. In relation to Artempo, for example, most of the classical curators wanted white gallery walls, but that wasn’t the case for me. Art for me is not about a revolution; I am interested in evolution. I have respect for everything, including the things that I don’t like. It is a learning process.
Is there a challenging project that you would like to do in future?
I would like to build on the land around our castle in Antwerp. My dream is to build an ideal village, with a river and underground parking, so you don’t see any cars. It’s going to look very poor but very nice [laughs]. It would be really quiet, like a Japanese village; very pure and monastic with beautiful gardens full of trees and a lot of respect for the surrounding nature. But now it is too expensive to make it possible to sell or rent there, so we have to find a solution to make it financially viable.
How long does it take for you to complete a project in architecture?
It very much depends on the client. People should fit the environments they want to live in; their house should be their favourite place in the whole world. I make my clients question whether it is something they really like, or only like because it fits in with current trends. Yesterday I was on site with two clients who are brothers and are building on the same piece of land; one of them wants a very fashionable and minimally designed house and the other wants a full, loaded, very cosy environment. I learn a lot from matching such contradictory views and finding solutions that make them happy.
What art institutions do you follow yourself?
I work so hard that I don’t have much time unfortunately. I do go to exhibitions, but I prefer going to artists’ studios. I learn a lot from artists. While showing at Frieze Masters in London in 2018, I went to see Lucian Freud’s studio before going to the fair; it was outstanding.
What do you think are the most pressing problems of the art world now?
I think a lot of people buy names. Celebrity culture and a lack of quality are defining features of the art world. In the 17th century, Rubens had never signed a painting because the quality was speaking for itself. Now it’s a little bit scary. That’s why I try to collect things that can ignite a new Renaissance and give body to the emptiness.
How do you see your legacy in the city of Antwerp?
I care a lot about the city. I am helping Antwerp in many ways; lately I gifted the redesign of the halls in the M HKA Museum of Contemporary Art, which I hear have been a great success. We created an open space, where people can work on their computers, research, or spend time. It is crucial, especially nowadays, for people to spend more time with art collections and to learn from them.
Storming
Alexander Shishkin-Hokusai. “The Storming”, total installation outside of the Shtager Gallery/Elephant & Castle Experimental Space, London, 2017.
The mass spectacle “The Storming of the Winter Palace”, directed by dramatist Nikolai Evreinov, took place on the third anniversary of the October Revolution. It was staged outside of the former Tsarist Winter Palace, the seat of the Provisional Government before Bolsheviks’ power grab. The performers reportedly included 125 ballet dancers, 100 circus artists, 200 women, 260 secondary actors, 150 assistants and 1750 supernumeraries. The spectacle took the form of ritual theatre, a Symbolist utopia that was born out of the unsuccessful revolution of 1905. It is also peculiar that “The Storming” is often taken as an historical event in public consciousness and bears even more symbolic weight in the context of the 100 years anniversary of “the ten days that shook the world”, or Bolshevik October Revolution of 1917.
The act of storming as the symbolic gesture of emancipation has ontological character in anthropology, cultural and political history. Herostratus, the 4th century BC arsonist, sought eternal fame and historical immortality by destroying one of the Seven Wonder of the Ancient World, the great Temple of Artemis in Ephesus. Firdos Square statue of Saddam Hussein destruction, “the toppling”, became an iconic symbol of a controversial turn in Iraqi history. The power of storming had been a universal and transcultural strategy of political legitimisation.
The total installation “Storming” by Alexander Shishkin-Hokusai follows the development of St Petersburg theatre and opera stage design aesthetics, in which the artist was professionally trained and work for many years. 43 figures in the total installation are sculptural materialisations of the simple drawings on the plywood cut outs, two dimensional and therefore flat, just like the appearance of the props on a theatre stage. The enactment of mass spectacle requires the stage and perfect viewing arrangement for the public, as the impact of the event has the ideological function of historical legitimisation. The installation features life-sized soldiers, sailors, naked women and other characters frozen still in a multiplicity of action scenes, which correspond to the original composition of the mass spectacle. The critical nature of their aesthetic appearance is a key for entering the multi-dimensional nature of Shishkin-Hokusai oeuvre: objectification of women and other oppressed groups in the society, ontological dichotomy, and dialectics of the nature of any historical event that caused the necessity to stage “storming” in the first place, are embedded in the narrative of the total installation. The installation will travel around London and adapt itself to each space that will be stormed by the diverse symbolic protagonists. It is far from the first total installation of the artist - he staged “Practices of Growing Up” in Ufa and St Petersburg, “A Pillared Incubator” in Helsinki, specially commissioned “Looking” at 2017 Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art in Moscow among others.
Beyond the critical deciphering of the heavy subjects there are languages of Socratic irony and strategic humor, that play a paramount role in the style of the artist. The figures appear to communicate strong emotions: some of them are ruthless, empowered, full of rigor and determination while others are terrified, desperate and helpless. The oppositional nature of anthropology is a recurrent subject in artist’s work: the ongoing series of “The Naked against The Dressed” plywood sculptures are a symbolic and bold representation of normalised ontological brutality of dialectics in being.
Shishkin-Hokusai practice is as enticing from the technical perspective as in its conceptual essence. The illustrations obtain sculptural shapes while remaining flat and further blur, almost until it disappears, the fundamental boundary between a sketch and an object. The hybrid nature of the practice of the artist is the result of his professional activity as both set designer for large theatrical production, where he uses his birth name “Alexander Shushkin” and contemporary artist, who goes by the name “Shishkin-Hokusai”. As the artist explains himself: “[famous Russian painter Ivan] Shishkin worked with nature. But I’ve added to that the antagonist “Shishkin-Hokusai”. Hokusai with the figurative plasticity in some sense. In this way, I encode two vectors for myself: Shishkin as environmental component and Hokusai as the psycho-dramatic in relation to homo sapiens”. One can hardly be positioned better to reflect on the nature of mass spectacles.
The whole drama of the spectacle of the total installation revolves around the Elephant & Castle Experimental Space on the South of London, a seemingly insignificant location for re-staging grand spectacles that change the course of history. However the story of one of London’s “Newingtons” is very enticing: it was transformed from a no-go-area into the experiment of urban utopian planning after the Second World War and then went back to be one the most dangerous parts of the city after the experiment failed. At the moment it again lives through the controversial “storm” of the new Renaissance, brought by neoliberal capital flows from elsewhere during the London real estate boom, which in itself can go to ashes according to the expected by some catastrophic socio-economic consequences of Brexit. History seems, both on macro and micro levels, to go in cycles: does it actually matter what one storm in order to feel emancipated, at least for a moment? Does this moment of feeling the true energy of life cost all the suffering of its consequence? Is it the only way to rupture the rigid structures of “normal”, with all its inequalities, violence and oppression? The answer is up to each and any but at the same time all of us.
(text by Denis Maksimov)
—- русский —-
Массовый спектакль “Штурм Зимнего Дворца” под руководством драматурга Николая Евреинова был поставлен в канун третьей годовщины Октябрьской революции. Действо произошло снаружи бывшего царского Зимнего дворца, где базировалось Временное правительство перед захватом власти в Петрограде большевиками. В труппе были 125 танцоров балета, 100 цирковых актеров, 200 женщин, 260 второстепенных персонажей, 150 ассистентов и 1750 членов “массовки”. Постановка была организована в формате “ритуального театра”, категории символической утопии, которая родилась как форма после неуспешной революции 1905 года. Достаточно занимательным является тот факт, что “Штурм” часто попадает во внимание как базирующийся на реальных событиях - и приобретает еще больше символического веса в контексте векового юбилея “10 дней, который потрясли мир”.
Акт “штурма” как символа эмансипации несет онтологический характер в социально-политической истории и антропологии. Герострат, поджигатель из 4 века до н.э., стремился внести свое имя в хроники навечно путем уничтожения одного из Семи Чудес Света античности - Храма Артемида Эфесской. “Опрокидывание” статуи Саддама Хуссейна на площади Фирдос стало иконографическим символом противоречивого поворота в истории Ирака. “Штурм” является универсальной и транскультурной стратегией политической легитимизации новой реальности.
Тотальная инсталляция “Штурм” Александра Шишкина-Хокусая отвечает эстетике Санкт-Петербургской традиции театрального и оперного дизайна, профессиональной отрасли художника помимо его практики в современном искусстве. 43 фигуры из фанеры являются скульптурной материализацией рисунков-вырезок из бумаги в двухмерной плоскости, аналогично формату традиционных театральных декораций. Активация массового спектакля требует сцены и идеального угла обзора для зрителей, поскольку задача мероприятия носит идеологический характер и заключается в исторической легитимизации. Инсталляция включает скульптуры солдат, моряков, обнаженных женщин и других участников “спектакля” на границе реальности и воображения, которые предстают перед смотрящим как компоненты остановленной во времени драматической сцены. Критическая сущность их эстетической формы является ключом для входа в разностороннюю природу практики Шишкина-Хокусая: “овеществление” женщин и других традиционно угнетаемых социально-политических групп в обществе, онтологические дихотомии и диалектика сущности исторического контекста, который становится причиной “штурма”, являются элементами тотальной инсталляции. Инсталляция будет представлена в нескольких пространствах в Лондоне, где сцена каждый раз будет адаптирована под новый “штурм” символическими протагонистами-скульптурами. Шишкин-Хокусай работает в медиуме тотальных инсталляций далеко не впервые - “Практики Взросления” были представлены в Уфе и Санкт-Петербурге, “Колонный инкубатор” в Хельсинки и специально произведенная для Триеннале российского современного искусства в Музее Гараж инсталляция “Смотрящий” в Москве.
Помимо критической дешифровки культурной реальности, язык сократической иронии и стратегический юмор играют важную роль в стилистике художника. Фигуры в тотальной инсталляции коммуницируют сильные эмоции: некоторые из них беспощадны, властны и полны уверенности в себе, в то время как другие выглядят устрашенными и беззащитными. Оппозиционная природа антропологии является постоянной темой работы художника: серия скульптурных работ “Голые против одетых” ярко и просто подчеркивает брутальный характер онтологической диалектики.
Практика Шишкина-Хокусая не менее интересна с технической точки зрения. Иллюстрации приобретают скульптурную форму в то время как остаются плоскими и таким образом дальше “размывают”, практически до исчезновения, фундаментальную границу между скетчем и материальным объектом. Гибридная природа практики художника является результатом смежности его профессиональной работы в качестве дизайнера театральных и оперных декораций с собственной художественной практикой, в которой он использует псевдоним “Шишкин-Хокусай”. Как художник объясняет сам “Шишкин работал с природой. Но к ней я добавил антагониста Шишкина-Хокусая. Хокусай с персонажами, с фигуративной пластикой, актерской в каком-то смысле. Таким образом я для себя зашифровываю два вектора: Шишкин как средовой момент, а Хокусай как психодрама, работа с гомо сапиенсом”. Сложно найти кого-то более подходящего для анализа природы массовых спектаклей.
Полноценная драма массового спектакля в тотальной инсталляции разворачивается вокруг экспериментального пространства Elephant & Castle на юге Лондона, казалось бы неважной локации для постановки революционных событий, которые стали причиной тектонических исторических изменений. Однако история одного из лондонских “Ньюингтонов” крайне занимательна: район был трансформирован из опаснейшего в городе в экспериментальное пространство урбанистической утопии после Второй мировой войны и затем, после провала эксперимента, снова стал сложным криминогенным центром. В данный момент он снова переживает противоречивый “шторм” изменений или новый Ренессанс, который был привнесен сюда Лондонским бумом градостроительства за счет инвесторов со всего мира - бумом, который может стать горсткой пепла согласно предсказаниям некоторых аналитиков последствий Брекзита. История на макро и микро уровнях ходит по кругу: важно ли, что кто-то “штурмует” для того, чтобы почувствовать бриз свободы и эмансипации, хотя на который промежуток времени? Является ли этот момент той истинной энергией жизни, которая стоит всех страданий для его достижения и возможных катастрофических последствий после него? Является ли “штурм” единственным способом “разрыва” структур “нормальности”, со всеми ее неравенствами, насилием и угнетениями? Ответ на эти вопросы является задачей как “индивидуального” для каждого, так и “общего” для всех нас.
(текст: Денис Максимов)
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Shtager Gallery/Elephant & Castle Experimental Space is pleased to present the total installation of the seminal Russian artist Alexander Shishkin-Hokusai (b. 1969, St. Petersburg, Russia), 2016 laureate of Sergey Kurekhin Award, nominee of the INNOVATION PRIZE Award and 2011 nominee of the Kandinsky Prize (“Project of the Year”) for the first time in London. The exhibition is curated by Marina Shtager and Denis Maksimov / Shtager Gallery/Elephant & Castle Experimental Space рады представить проект тотальной инсталляции российского художника Александра Шишкина-Хокусая (род. 1969, Санкт-Петербург, Россия), лауреата Премии Сергея Курехина в 2016, номинанта на премию “Инновация” в 2011 и Премию Кандинского (“Проект года”) впервые в Лондоне. Кураторы выставки - Марина Штагер и Денис Максимов
Temple of Futures Thinking in London
Avenir Institute. “…thing”, 2015
The future is a pastiche of relational and extrapolative images of expectations, desires and fears. Avenir Institute was founded in summer 2015 with the mission of exploring the questions on potentialities in possible futures. This was a gesture towards challenging the prevailing linear thinking in philosophy, politics, technology and arts.
As a summary of the think tank’s transdisciplinary researches between 2015 and 2016, Avenir Institute presents the total installation Temple of Futures Thinking. The political theologist Carl Schmitt argued about the nature of political as inherently religious. The belief in the sacred nature of the non-visualisable notions of ‘social contract’ or ‘democracy’ is quite proximate to the assurance in life after death, the existence of karma and so forth. Why then to settle for a limited one-dimensionality of monotheistic and autocratic teachings of the books?
The Temple of Futures Thinking is critical: it does not offer answers on the eternal questions, but it twists the processes of reflection about their roots. Knowledges are infinitely plural as are the possible interpretations of thinking patterns. Just like in Ancient Greek mythology, the literal is poetic and the poetic is literal. It is the superposition of human intellectual and emotional intelligence. The total installation consists of 7 brass mind maps with the core terms for contemporary futures thinking introduced by the Institute, the lecture- performance “Futures: Plural, Queer & Rhizomatic”, which digs critically in the nature of enclosed systemic thinking, and the publication “Against the Future”.
In the midst of the socio-political search for a new modernity, triggered by the perceived collapse of the postmodern promise, and the settling for the convenient refuge in nostalgia, we offer a focus on futures thinking as the way to replace the blind simplicity with a beautiful and multidimensional complexity. If we are anthropologically inclined to believe in something, let it be the belief in the limitlessness of human potentiality.
The installation is on view from June 17 - July 2 at Studio 24, 87 Crampton Street, London, SE17 3AZ (by appointment only: shtagergallery(at)gmail.com, +44 7541 251979
too much as not enough, vol. 1
a group exhibition feat. feat. Marina Alexeeva, Maria Arendt, Ludmila Belova, Vita Buivid, Alexandr Dashevsky, Laura Dekker, Lee Edwards, Andrey Gorbunov, Amir-Nasr Kamgooyan, Boris Kazakov, Alexandra Mazur-Knyazeva, Ivan Plusch, Vitaly Pushnitsky, Alexandr Shishkin-Hokhusai, Ivan Tuzov
Artist, curator, dealer, provocateur and polymath Marcel Duchamp is a Pandora of art history for some and John the Baptist of modern and contemporary art for others. Among many disruptions of the order and normality of what was set to be called ‘art’, in 1935 he created Boîte-en-valise, or box in a suitcase, a portable miniature monograph including sixty-nine reproductions of the artist’s own work. In the following years, he created other editions of the boxes, with varying content and luxurious touch, including a special edition for long time friend Peggy Guggenheim. Is it a portfolio of artist’s work or an individual piece of work, or maybe both? As enigmatic as ever, Duchamp was not meaning to provide a definite answer.
An inaugural exhibition at Shtager Gallery in London unites under the same roof in a compact space not only one, but multiple group and solo ‘exhibitions’. The conceptual gesture of Duchamp is peculiar in the contemporary context of commercialisation, gentrification and scarcity. How many narratives and stories can strategically fit in a small experimental space?
Duchamp anticipated and contributed to the institutionalisation of many forms of presentation within and beyond artistic fields with his radical and daring innovations. Curriculum Vitae and a personal statement are the standard of self-presentation now. The radical nature of his heritage is timeless and in the currents of crises in contemporaneity, becomes actual and even urgent.
Attention deficit alongside the culture of acceleration lead to us to necessity to be more effective in literally all aspects of modern life. The functions of the museum, gallery, artist-run and independent project spaces are merging with each other in search of new meaning as the social and political conditions of artistic production are evolving towards new, seemingly tougher, but possible just different frontiers. Revisiting in this context the most influential ideas of the age of manifestos is more than necessary.
A portable exhibition is presented here in the form of an intellectual vortex: it drags the viewer into its own laws of matter, gravity and light. Just like it is in the space of contemporary media, where the increasing number of simultaneous voices create more autonomous images of subjective real.
By placing the artists in an experimental, multiversal and hardly comprehensible conversation, a strategic cacophony, there is an emergence of the question about what we observe in the constantly accelerating societies: is too much the new not enough?
'too much as not enough’, curated by Denis Maksimov, is the first exhibition in an upcoming yearly cycle of research in contemporary miniature art practices in Shtager Gallery (Studio 24, 87 Crampton Street, London, SE17 3AZ ). Vol. 1 will run from May 18 till May 30 with the opening on May 18, 19.00, by the lecture by Denis Maksimov on Duchamp, acceleration, radical forms of presentation, experimentation & ‘too much as not enough’ series (RSVP: shtagergallery@gmail.com).
Shtager Gallery moved from the cultural capital of Russia, St Petersburg, to one of the global art capitals, London, the UK, in 2017. Founder of the gallery Marina Shtager has been working in professional art world since 2006 in the roles of director and curator. She founded Shtager Gallery in 2014. Elephant & Castle is an experimental art space conceived by Shtager Gallery in cooperation with Morris & Associates in 2017.