Kontakt Belgrade (2007)
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Kontakt Belgrade … works from the Collection of Erste Bank Group
20 January–1 March 2007
Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade
Curators: Walter Seidl, Jiří Ševčík, Branka Stipančić
With the presentation of a special selection from the collection as well as new acquisitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, the artworks included in this exhibition were given a re-appraisal and a referential framing in one of the contexts within which they had been made. It was a special opportunity to present the collection in one of the only museums of contemporary art to have been built in Eastern Europe during the 1960s in the modernist tradition prevailing at that time, with the museum being closed for renovation shortly after the collection’s presentation in 2007. The collection’s relationship with the local context was visible in a great number of artworks, many of which had been produced in the former Yugoslavia. Hence, the exhibition gave rise to a unique relationship between the artworks and the architecture of the building by Ivan Antić and Ivanka Raspopović. With the presentation of the collection in Belgrade, Kontakt demonstrated the significance of both the local infrastructure and its cultural heritage, which is linked to artistic masterpieces of the region and to social transformations over a period of more than 50 years. Paraphrasing the western model of the white cube, the exhibition architects Nicole Six and Paul Petritsch intervened with an architectonic setup within the grid structure of a high-modernist building. The corridors between the substance of the old building and the intervention of white stages for displaying art almost became a symbol of cultural difference, translating the perspectives of the collection into an architectonic abstraction. The architects had to deal with ideologically outdated architecture that had seen better days from a preservational point of view but was nonetheless possessed of a strong and rhetorical presence. Setting up four identical rooms with a white floor and white walls linked the exhibition to four relevant themes in the collection: reflection on spatial issues, on themes of abstraction, and on both political and gender-related topics in public space.
Museum of Contemporary Art
Ušce 10, Blok 15
11070 Novi Beograd
Serbia
20 January–1 March 2007
Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade
Curators: Walter Seidl, Jiří Ševčík, Branka Stipančić
With the presentation of a special selection from the collection as well as new acquisitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, the artworks included in this exhibition were given a re-appraisal and a referential framing in one of the contexts within which they had been made. It was a special opportunity to present the collection in one of the only museums of contemporary art to have been built in Eastern Europe during the 1960s in the modernist tradition prevailing at that time, with the museum being closed for renovation shortly after the collection’s presentation in 2007. The collection’s relationship with the local context was visible in a great number of artworks, many of which had been produced in the former Yugoslavia. Hence, the exhibition gave rise to a unique relationship between the artworks and the architecture of the building by Ivan Antić and Ivanka Raspopović. With the presentation of the collection in Belgrade, Kontakt demonstrated the significance of both the local infrastructure and its cultural heritage, which is linked to artistic masterpieces of the region and to social transformations over a period of more than 50 years. Paraphrasing the western model of the white cube, the exhibition architects Nicole Six and Paul Petritsch intervened with an architectonic setup within the grid structure of a high-modernist building. The corridors between the substance of the old building and the intervention of white stages for displaying art almost became a symbol of cultural difference, translating the perspectives of the collection into an architectonic abstraction. The architects had to deal with ideologically outdated architecture that had seen better days from a preservational point of view but was nonetheless possessed of a strong and rhetorical presence. Setting up four identical rooms with a white floor and white walls linked the exhibition to four relevant themes in the collection: reflection on spatial issues, on themes of abstraction, and on both political and gender-related topics in public space.
Museum of Contemporary Art
Ušce 10, Blok 15
11070 Novi Beograd
Serbia