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Time Geometry -
Practices in Public Environment

Initiated by HR-Stamenov and Bora Petkova
18-31 May 2012

Aiming to shed more light on the experimental use of the public space, in the halls of the museum will be presented video documentations of performances and artistic actions in public space by international artists who are interested mostly in working in an active social environment and in the interactions with people.

HR-Stamenov and DLQ, David Perez Karmadavis, Bora Petkova, Saso Sedlacek, Veronika Tzekova, Miryana Todorova ,Jaroslav Kysa, Michail Michailov, Valentina Roselli

The exhibition will examine different artistic positions and practices in the most extensive network of realities that the contemporary society generates by focusing on the identification of these kinds of practices in the public context and their localization within the system of contemporary art. Are they attractive and communicative enough? What is the goal of the artistic interventions? Do they provoke any substantial change into the society?

Without giving any particular answer to all these questions, the exhibition presents different examples of artistic practices which aim to integrate into the everyday life: A strange train appears passing by confined spaces, buildings and shops in an Italyan city; In Latin America someone is building the Tower of Babel not from stones, but from real people; A blind Dominican man carries in his arms a Haitian woman without legs; Someone performs a levitation in Berlin's panel neighborhoods; A beggar robot competes with self-service machines in Japan, while in Taipei and Ljubjana it collects alms in the crowded shopping malls in the name of the poor; The paving slabs in Sofia have been used for a play of the "Ludo-game"; Some vague moving forms create bewilderment in New York; A barrier of pigeons stops the traffic on a busy junction in London; An ambiguous thirty meters lettering is faced by visitors of the St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna; Somewhere in Ethiopia a young Italian artist conducts a workshop in new media with a native tribe.


Presented in the spaces of the Regional History Museum – Plovdiv, the show “Time Geometry – Practices in Public Environment” will provide an opportunity for historical continuity that to establish a logical connection between the past and the present. The exhibition emphasizes the mission of the museum to preserve the tangible and the intangible values as evidences of humanity and makes visible the relation of those values to the particular environment and broader social field, where they are developed and which they actively transform.

The exhibition brings in the museum halls not only a new selection of works and documentations, but also rather new objectives and audience. The focus is put on the need for social development of the museum that brings the institution and the artists together, allowing the museums in general to be considered not only as witnesses and guardians of the past but also as adequate platforms and partners in the reflection upon the processes in the contemporary society.


 

Participating artists:

HR-Stamenov and DLQ, David Perez Karmadavis, Bora Petkova, Saso Sedlacek, Veronika Tzekova, Miryana Todorova ,Jaroslav Kysa, Michail Michailov, Valentina Roselli

 
HR-Stamenov (b.1981 in Plovdiv) graduated in 2007 in Painting from the  Accademia di Belle Arte di Carrara, Italy. Between 2008-2009 he started to work in the field of art in public spaces collaborating with the Isola Art Center, Milano and has begun to work with the collective for visual productions DLQ on the project Phenomenon of W24°58’59,43” N42°07’55,29., which is known as The Ghost Train. In 2010-2011 he received a research grant from the Spinola-Banna per l'arte, Foundation in Turin and realized several video and light installations in urban environment, institutional and museum spaces.                       
In 2011 HR-Stamenov was among the selected artists for M-Tel, Award for Contemporary Bulgarian Art. The same year he received a research grant from the Goethe-Institut, and worked on AIR in collaboration with the artist Bora Petkova at Lichtenberg Studios, Berlin.
In 2011 he was also awarded The Young European Artist Trieste Contemporanea Award.


DLQ is a collective for visual productions, which was founded by the filmmakers Stefano De Felici and Enrico Bonino in 2005. From 2007 to the present moment DLQ’s projects are broadcasted on some of the most important channels of the Italian television such as Rai2, Rete4, Canale5, Italia1. Photographs of these projects have been published in magazines and newspapers as L 'Espresso and La Stampa. In 2009 DLQ won the Award for Best Italian Documentary at the festival Italian Brava Gente in Florence with their first documentary film The Big Hunt, which was a respond to the crisis affecting Europe. In 2010 their short fiction Garcia on the life of the poet Garcia Lorca was in the official selection at Cannes Short Corner, Festival de Cannes. In 2011 they were awarded the prize Fabermeeting 2011 for the best new media project with Trans-medial project (Mano d’opera) presented at Lingotto and Multi-Media Park in Turin.


David Perez Karmadavis (b. 1976 in Santo Domingo). In 2009 he received а grant by the Franklin Furnace Found, New York and was invited to realize a project in Trebesice Castle, Czech Republic. In 2010 Karmadavis worked in Spinola-Banna Foundation, Turin and the same year received a special award from the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros. He took part in the XXIII biennial competition Eduardo Leon Jimenez, Centro León, Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic. The artist received Honorable Mention in 2011 for his project Des-pacio proyecto. Karmadavis’s video Estrutura Completa was presented in the 54-th Venice Biennale 2011.


Bora Petkova (b. 1979 in Varna) graduated in Sculpture in 2004 from the National Academy of Fine Arts Sofia. In 2005-2009 she worked predominately in Bulgaria with the official state and private institutions, galleries and museums for art. Petkova is awarded with the prize for emerging artist from St. Cyril and St. Methodius International Foundation (2005), M-Tel Awards for Contemporary Bulgarian Art (2007) and the Gaudenz B. Ruf Award for New Bulgarian Art in 2008. In 2010 she received the UniCredit Full Grant for the International Residence Program of Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella and participated at the 2nd International Antakya Biennial. The same year the artist started to work in the field of art in public space. In 2011 she received a grant from Goethe-Institut to make a research and work on AIR at Lichtenberg Studios in Berlin, in collaboration with HR-Stamenov.    


Sašo Sedlaček (b. 1974 in Ljubljana) lives and works in Ljubljana. His primary interest is the (technological) waste that people overlook and the ways in which it can be made useful once again. Sedlaček’s work is generally defined by theories of disposal and the use and reuse of cheap technologies and waste materials. His practical and humorous works result from subversive recycling of scientific, legal, or technological facts, employing DIY (do-it-yourself) and collaborative methods. Sedlaček has participated in numerous solo and group shows, including at the Secession in Vienna; the Sixth Taipei Biennial; the Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana; the Ludwig Museum in Budapest; the October Saloon in Belgrade; Ars Electronica in Linz and the MUMOK in Vienna. Among the several awards he has received for his work are the OHO Group Award (Slovenian winner of YVAA award in 2006); the SPAPORT award from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Banja Luka (2008); a Special Mention from the VIDA 11.0 Award in Madrid (2009). He has been an artist-in-residence at the ISCP in New York and IAMAS in Japan.


Veronika Tzekova (b.1973 in Vratza) graduated MFA from Dutch Art Institute (DAI), postgraduate interdisciplinary research in visual arts and media, Enschede, The Netherlands in 2001. In 2004/2005 she takes part in “Transnational Spaces”, a postgraduate program by Bauhaus Foundation, Dessau, Germany. In 2012 Veronika will take part in the winner of Bank of Austria Award Blacksea Calling residency, <rotor> and Cultural City Network Graz, Graz, Austria, 2012 and later in 2012 will join the residency programs MPRA in Poznan, Poland and Art and Cultural Studies Laboratory, Yerevan, Armenia. Previously she won an UniCredit grant for UNIDEE in Residence International Program, Cittadellarte - Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella, Italy in 2010.  In 2011 Veronika Tzekova was nominated for several awards among which GO11 AWARD FOR URBAN ALTERNATE USE                                                                                                                                      
Veronika Tzekova is an author of the launched in 2011 project Urban Olympics 2011 and currently develop the multiparty project Challenged Games, parts of which has already been presented in the"Join City” Festival, Burgas, the exhibition Challenged Games in Galerie Centrum, Graz and Sofia Design Week


Miryana Todorova (b. 1984 in Sofia) has been completing currently MFA degree from the School of Visual Arts, New York. In 2007 she took part at Actions on Public Space postgraduate program at Elisava, Barcelona. In 2008 she received the Immigrant Outreach Mentoring program grant from NYFA and was included in the exhibition Making It at the Deutsche Bank Gallery, New York. In 2010 she received the Charles G. Shaw Award, Brooklyn College MFA Program. Recently Miryana participated in international exhibitions including: New York Temporary -MUSE Center of Photography and The Moving Image, New York; Dwelling-in-Travel, Center for Contemporary Art in Plovdiv. in 2011 she participated in M-Tel Award for Contemporary Bulgarian Art, and received the Gaudenz B. Ruf Award for New Bulgarian Art.


Jaroslav Kysa (b. 1981 in Zilina) lives and works in London. In 2007 he graduated from the Faculty of Arts, the Department of Visual Arts and Intermedia at the Technical University Kosice, Slovakia. Since 2008 Kysa has been working in a number of residence programs such the International Artist in Residence Program in “Futura”, Prague, Czech Republic (2008) and International Artist in Residence Program in Zavod Celeia, Slovenia and Banska Stanica Contemporary in Slovakia (2010-2011). The artist participated in exhibitions at Slovak National Gallery; House of Art, Bratislava; Red Gallery, London and several private galleries. He was awarded Szpilman Award for 2011 for his research on capturing ephemeral situations.


Michail Michailov (b. 1978 in Bulgaria) graduated in Fine Arts from the University of Veliko Tarnovo. In 2002 he moved to Vienna, where currently he studies art history at the University of Vienna. Michailov is a co-founder of the Artist Association of Austrian and Bulgarian Artists and is among the main initiators of a number of projects of the organization. In 2007 he was invited to take part in the Summer Academy at the Paul Klee Centre in Bern, Switzerland, working on the topic “Situation and Spectacle“ with lecturer Cerith Wyn Evans. From 2006 to 2009 Michail Michailov worked in cooperation with the art group Gelitin, developing artworks for different exhibitions, for example La Louvre at the museum D’ art Moderne de la Ville, Paris in 2008. The same year Michailov participated in the exhibition “AUSTRIAconTEMPORARY” at the Essl Museum and was nominated as an Austrian emerging artist for the year. The next year, 2009, he was selected as the artist of the month at Simens artLab and took part in the show Value Point - Siemens_artLab hosted by Hilger Contemporary. In the last three years Michailov took part in different exhibitions among them: 2010 - BLICKWECHSEL. Austrian Photography Today, Westlicht, Vienna; You won't make a (nation)state with us, Kunstraum Niederösterreich, Vienna; 2011 – Unlimited, M-Tel Award For Contemporary Bulgarian Art, Sofia; Absolut Vienna, Vienna Museum. In 2010 he received an external grant in Roma and in 2013 he will be at the Cité des arts of Paris for several months. 

 

Valentina Roselli (b. 1986 in Turin) graduated from the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin and currently has been graduating the Faculty of Visual Arts of IUAV in Venice. In 2008 she took part in the residency program Kuvataideakatemia in Helsinki due to the UniCredit Passaporto Prize. Roselli participated in the project Beyond Death: Viral Discontents and Contemporary Notions about AIDS, presented at the 54th Venice Biennale - Norway Pavilion (OCA – Office for Contemporary Art Norway). Currently she works as an artist in residence at Bevilacqua la Masa Foundation in Venice.