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| Biennale without a Budget Alise Tīfentāle, art critic Prague 4th Biennale 14.05.-26.07.2009. Karlin Hall | |
| The Prague Biennale, although it carries the name of the city, is in a sense an import of culture from Western Europe. That is, in 2001 the Italian publisher and curator Giancarlo Politi, the man behind the well-known international art magazine ‘Flash Art', started up a new initiative which could be described as the mini budget biennale, or the biennale without a budget. Politi held the first such exhibition in the capital city of Albania, Tirana, but thereafter it was continued in Prague, where in 2003 Politi together with the curator Helena Kontova founded the Prague Biennale. The international outlook of the magazine ‘Flash Art' is reflected in the biennale exhibition where, just as in the pages of the magazine, art works of the most varied contents and quality, from just about half the countries of the world, flash past the eyes of the viewer. | |
 Andro Semeiko (1975). White Stripe. Oil on canvas. 170x220cm. 2009. The Georgian artist, resident in London, was invited to participate in the exhibition From Individual to DVD. Young Georgian Painters, which was put together by the curators Nana Kimelashvili and David Andriadze. From Expanded Art. Photo: Alise Tīfentāle | |
| This comparison of the exhibition to the magazine comes to mind spontaneously. As when putting together a magazine, where the information is arranged in a number of chapters and subheadings and even smaller units, with different authors responsible for the constituent parts, the Prague Biennale also is built around a similar structural model. The three thematic groups are Expanded Painting, Art in General and Focus on Italy(1). Each of these groups consists of a number of micro-shows, which have been created by the curators invited to take part by Politi and Kontova. This somewhat decentralised weblike model, in the context of the biennale ideology of working without a budget, in a way offers almost a kind of "do-it-yourself" alternative - you won't encounter the works of contemporary stars and big-name artists. In addition, the cheap plywood stands and the timeworn vestiges of the industrial past of the building still remaining in the exhibition hall(2) are a far cry from, for example, the chic way that art is presented in the new Francois Pinault gallery in Venice, Punta della Dogana, which opened its doors in June. Everything has been done as simply as pos-sible: there is a space, there is light, and there are works of art. Expanded Art was intended to be a passionate and convincing answer to the question: "Is painting dead?", a question which Politi and Konova have posed to artists and theoreticians in the pages of ‘Flash Art'. It is clear that painting is not and cannot be dead - quite the contrary, "painting is sexy", as replied the Italian painter Valerio Carrubba(3). The expositions contained in this "chapter" give a fragmentary introduction to a selection of the newest painting, which has been collated mainly according to geographic or national principles. Thus, for example, the "sub-chapter" Individuals, curated by Politi and Konova, presents a number of new works by Italian painters, varying in style and genre (photo realism, sentimental figural painting in the tradition of realism, somewhat less concrete and remotely similar to Luc Tuymans or Wilhelm Sasnal, etc.). Other "sub-chapters" provide an introduction to the works of painters from the Czech Republic, Germany, Romania, Hungary, Singapore, the Philippines, Korea, China, Poland, Mexico, Georgia, Albania and Kosovo. As each author is represented by only one, or just a few works, this is a slightly superficial introduction, and also in the absence of a wider informative context some works were difficult to understand. But in any case the painting chapter in this magazine - biennale was the most convincing, if not by providing an in depth insight into the artists' styles and the social and cultural background for their creative work, then certainly in its variety. | |
 View of the exhibition hall, Prague 4th Biennale. Photo: Zenta Dzividzinska | |
| The title Art in General covered three quite different expositions: Czech and Slovak art, as well as contemporary works by international female artists. Except for one or two aggressively feminist and physio-logially unpleasant works in the women's show (for example Barbed Wire Hoop (2000), the video by Israeli artist Sigalita Lanadau, where a naked woman on a beach circles around herself a hulahoop of barbed wire, which with each circling leaves bloody marks on the body; thankfully the video is only one minute and 52 seconds long!), the selected works by Czech and Slovak artists left an impression of student-like hooliganism: experiments with form and material (a foam rubber sun, an archway made of books) among which the installation Monument to a Hay Rake (2009) by the Slovak artist Pater Kralik (1981) stood out as the "real thing". This was an archaic hay rake, to which a horse is to be harnessed, placed on a bale of hay. A memorial to the past as well as a reminder of the future - and also, that everything which today seems modern to us will after a time fall into disuse and fade from memory, unless one artist or another in the future should have the idea of using the object to express a thought. The video Martelinar, by the Amsterdam-based Slovak artist Lucija Nimcova (1977), was another pleasing work. Filmed in Mexico, with a lightly comic touch and at the same time threatening overtones it shows a number of men smashing a concrete floor in a room with hammers. As it turns out, this is not a laborious act of destruction or group therapy for aggression and hate, as may initially seem, but a unique method of treating concrete (the Spanish name for it martelinar comes from the word for hammer martillo), which was invented and introduced in the 1970s by the Mexicam architect Teodoro González de León (1926). The techinique itself presents a certain ambiguity: apparently destruc-tive (therefore negative) means can achieve an aesthetic (therefore positive) effect, as intended by the architect. In conclusion, one should note the positive effects of this biennale without a budget: even though the organisers are not spending money on superfluous glamour, bourgeois comforts and free souvenirs, it is one of the events that gives structure to the actual artistic process and keeps it going, and, one should imagine, attracts the attention of international art professionals to the art of the Czech Republic and the surrounding regions. The artists obtain a neat and substantial addition to the CVs, and are once more ready for new heroic deeds. (1) The first Prague Photo Biennale was included in the Prague Biennale as a separate entity. More on this in the August edition of ‘Foto Kvartāls'. (2) The shows of the biennale are displayed in the former industrial building Karlin Hall, not far from the centre of Prague, which has been adapted for the purpose. (3) Painting: A Form of Retinal and Olfactory Art? Prague Biennale 4. Milan: Giancarlo Politi, Editor, 2009, p. 13. /Translator into English: Terēze Svilane/ | |
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