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| What does it mean to organize a single art form exhibition today? Ula Tornau, Curator Questions for the curator of the 14th Baltic Painting Triennial in Vilnius, Evaldas Stankevicius, and the curator of the upcoming 15th Baltic Grap-hic Triennial in Tallinn, Simon Rees | |
 The 14th Baltic Painting Triennial in Vilnius 'False Recognition'. View from exhibition. Publicity photo | |
| The 14th Painting Triennial False Recognition will be on show at the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius from 18 June to 15 August, 2010. It is being organized by the Contemporary Art Centre together with the Lithuanian Artists Union, who have taken the initiative of fostering the tradition of Baltic painting triennials since 1969. Last year the Artists Union issued an open call for a curatorial proposal for the Triennial, and they accepted a collaborative concept by the CAC curator Evaldas Stankevicius and the curator of Lund Konsthall, Anders Kreuger. Vilnius Painting Triennials were started as a part of broader network of Baltic triennials based on artistic genres and highlighting national artistic ‘specializations’. Sculpture quadrennials have been organized in Riga and print art triennials in Tallinn. What does it mean today to mount a major genre show every three years? What sense does it make at a time when the discussion on transdisciplinarity and the validity of separating art into academic disciplines is so obvious, to the point of losing its urgency? These questions featured prominently in conversations with the curator of the 14th Vilnius Painting Triennial, Evaldas Stankevičius and Simon Rees, the curator of the 15th Tallinn Print Triennial. Ula Tornau: Could you please comment on the initial concept for the 14th Triennial of Painting False Recognition? Evaldas Stankevicius: When, together with Anders Kreuger, we started generating possible points of departure for the triennial, we found two. The first was a quest for memory in painting. In history, painting was always importantly positioned within the question of memory, the imagery of it and its materiality. There were periods which raged a ‘war’ against imagery – the periods of iconoclasm in the Middle Ages, Reformation, or even Modernism, but those wars were also addressing the problem of memory and trying to control the means of its communication. Thus our first point of departure was the question of imagery production in its relation to images from the past. The second point of departure was an obvious return of the figure in today’s contemporary art. An eager and proud return. Anders proposed to apply Bergson’s term of ‘false recognition’, which in English has this broad field of connotations including recognition as appreciation, knowing and esteem. U.T.: How would you comment the said return of the figurative in today’s art? What purpose does it serve? Why did it happen? E.S.: I cannot claim that I am much specialized in painting, but I am sincerely fascinated by it. I like to look at a painting as Mr Bean confirmed. When, ten years ago, I was organizing the 11th Vilnius triennial Painterly, painting was still suffering. It’s my personal take on it. So then painting was operating in the field after its official death procclamation. It was dealing with self-reflection, an analysis of itself, the search for ways which could lead out of this death, a search of how to become a medium which could be meaningful. Now, ten years after, painting has started to live its own life again. Thus it has started enjoying itself: enjoying the gesture, enjoying a certain apotheosis of the memory, enjoying the conscious production and reproduction of the image. That’s the way I see this progression in painting during the past ten years – it has moved from self-analysis towards self-reflection and enjoyment. U.T.: The works shown at the triennial present a broad spectrum of working models, of attitudes towards painting. Could you comment on them? What were the actual ways that painting found for itself during that period of self-analysis? E.S.: Painting has become a very multifaceted field of visual art. But the formation of this show certainly had personal motivations, so all the works here have things in common, despite their visual diversity. Of course, since in the organization of this show not one but three people were involved, we have here three viewpoints, not one. U.T.: How is your conceptual vision different from Anders’ or Magda’s? E.S.: Its difficult to define the processes of selection concretely, even for myself. My personal choice was for the painting – including its initial qualities. In my view, even such seeming abstractionists as Henrikas Čerapas or Tillman Kaiser work in the figurative tradition. Their work is not grounded in the tradition of abstraction or post-abstraction. The objects they chose or the way they paint is being done within the tradition of figurative painting. And yet I was surprised by the diversity of approaches to painting in this show. Especially after a tour through the exhibition, guided by the artists themselves. Their styles of articulation revealed totally different interests in painting. From Praneet Soi, who made a special work by bringing fragments of his prior memories and Vilnius’ experiences through in his wall paintings, and actually turning the inner courtyard of the CAC into his own canvas, up to Matts Leiderstam, who is researching how paintings are seen and the history of this. In the triennial he shows two series of photographs. U. T.: Why this painting triennial embraces work that is not painting, works that are not made in the traditional techniques of painting? Lolita Jablonskienė, the director of National Gallery in Vilnius once made this division, she told that there is painting and there is contemporary art. And in the field of contemporary art people use different techniques including painting. It can be called painting as an extended field. This triennial embraces both notions, we have artists who are only working in the tradition of painting, and people who use painting in their work, but in a different way. The participation of Leiderstam is very important for this exhibition. He is the only artist who does not show painting, but researches the concept of the painting itself. He took part in the Painterly ten years ago, and he is one of the, let’s say, conceptual painters. He does not paint, but researches issues relating to painting through other media. The Danish artist Nils Bonde is also an artist who is using in painting as an extended field. His installation consists of a variety of media and takes up a volume of space, it is not a two-dimensional format any more. I think Nils elaborated on his work very well during the guided tour. He researches the ways and mechanisms of manipulating one’s own representation in the media, including the strategies famous and scandalous media stars use. This ties in with our concept of False Recognition very well. U.T.: What would you say about Tillman Kaiser’s work? I think that it also has a very strong presence in the exhibition. E.S.: I didn’t completely agree with what he was saying during the guided tour, stating that he sees his work as being part of the surrealist tradition only. I see a lot of traditions of modernism in his work, including Dada, Futurism. But I can sincerely say that I have never seen so much bizarre energy, in its most positive sense, as in the work of Kaiser. U.T.: Maybe we often understand surrealism in quite a straightforward way. But in a sense, when Tillman talks about taking certain details from the surrounding environment, deforming them, abstracting and starting to repeat them in a certain visual rhythm, I think here we could be talking about classical surrealist strategies. E.S.: Kaiser’s works are difficult to comment. I have read and thought a lot about his works, but I think that all those efforts to verbalize his practice do not explain any of it. The works do, they are convincing and self-sufficient, and I think that this is the best quality of painting. Kaiser’s works are so strong visually, but they also narrate. They tell stories in the good old tradition of painting where you have the primary elements of painting –colour, line, the projection of space. And somehow they carry some taint of the Freudian era, the Vienna of the Twenties. | |
 The 14th Baltic Painting Triennial in Vilnius 'False Recognition'. View from exhibition. Publicity photo | |
| U.T.: Could you please tell more about the organizational side of the project. You were working in collaboration with other curators who contributed to the organization of this Triennial – Anders Kreuger and Magda Kardasz. How did you share out the labour, how did the selection process go, etc.? E.S.: From the very beginning we started working together with Anders Kreuger as a team, but later he acknowledged that time wise he wasn’t able to take equal part in the organization. Then I contacted Magda Kardasz from Zacheta National Gallery in Warsaw, who had put together some painting exhibitions – for instance, the solo show of Luc Tuymans. So the collaboration focused not so much on the content, but mostly on the initial logistics, bringing our contacts and networks together. Anders and Magda proposed the artists and we made the final selection. I just was the one who had to shape it into a body, into a physical object. U.T.: What does it mean to organise a painting show today or to curate a painting triennial? How do you regard this vision of a particular form of art at a time when we are discussing how all branches of art are merging? E.S.: Firstly, for a long time I was fascinated to use this amazing designation of painting triennial, which has a long tradition in history. It is a tradition of the Lithuanian Artists Union, but I think they have not used the many opportunities that the tradition actually presents. Today’s show is already the 14th Painting Triennial in Vilnius. And this tradition provides an occasion to produce a much anticipated event, and not only to satisfy personal local desires to get exhibited. It provides possibilities for making an interesting, international, vivid event that attracts attention. In recent years, the Lithuanian Artists Union did not really let the event evolve, which is a pity, since this meant a certain isolation from more wide-ranging processes. Whereas it is possible to turn these repeated painting events into a fantastic tradition. U.T.: And what does it mean today to make an exhibition based on a particular art form? E.S.: This is exactly the most interesting thing which, from the very beginning, gave us a certain conceptual frame and corrected our vision of the selection. We decided to make a traditional exhibition of painting. For instance, inviting works which still keep to the traditional two dimensional format. And that’s where I see the beauty of the Vilnius painting triennial tradition. It gives the opportunity to choose a different vision every three years, and to explore the concept of painting always in a different way. U.T.: It would be interesting to find out how Simon Rees sees the comparable task of organizing the 15th Print Triennial in Tallinn in 2011 – the topic being For Love Not Money. What is the history of the graphic art triennial? The most recent shows have already demonstrated efforts to analyze the field of visual arts itself. Simon Rees: I am interested in working inside the historical paradigm, for one. Even though this started as a Soviet tradition, as an instrumentalisation of art through regions and Soviet Socialist republics, since there were areas of specialization in one place; these were some of the more innocent intrumentalisations. So I think this adds regional specificity of art that should be encouraged. Of course, the graphic triennial I am working with is its 15th inception. In all the concepts I have written I have underlined the word reproducible. So the reproducible embraces photography, video, digital media – I mean, other forms than print. The title is For Love Not Money and conceptually it focuses on money as a printed form, as well as other forms of printed valuables such as postage stamps, share certificates, bond issues, tickets for airplanes, etc. It’s funny that the bedrock of capitalist society is actually a printed medium. Because money is produced through the complicated process of printing, and that is actually the production of a value system – as well as credit cards, and all kinds of other digital cards which are put through reprographic technologies. So to say that print is outmoded is to say that the value system we are living in at present is not current. This graphic triennial is actually reflecting upon that. U. T. How do you see the tradition of a genre show in the international context? S.R.: One section of the graphic triennial is dedicated to the Ljubliana print triennial, so this focus on the genre is not only a Soviet initiative. Remember, the Muenster Skulptur project started in the 1970s in the West. And there is a long standing event in Philadelphia called Philographica, which is a print-based quadrennial also, and a major event. There was an important Mildura Sculpture Triennial in Australia which started in the 1950s and ran until the 1990s, along with discussions on sculpture as an extended field and no longer being a hermetic object. It’s not that there is an imminent conservatism in triennials based on a single art form. I'd also say that the architecture, dance, opera biennials, all in Venice, also reflect the Western canon of this idea. We have to remember these examples which tell us that Baltic ones are by no means more conservative or outmoded than other biennales in other places, because this is the way we often think. On the one hand, we could say that their time has passed. But what makes our region special is, somehow, those networks and connections, and we have to manage to bring this to the wider world. | |
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