Rewriting Worlds

A couple of weekends ago I was invited to a dinner party at a friend of a friends apartment close to Red October.  When I arrived I was a little taken aback by the niche decor. Graffiti scribbled walls, police tape cordoning off the toilet and plastic sheets covered with marker pen creating a den in one of the bedrooms.  Annelies then informed me that Simon's apartment was actually being used to showcase an exhibition curated by the Austrian Embassy. 

On September 22, the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art opened its fourth edition. Titled “Rewriting Worlds,’’ it will run until October 30 and features 64 artists and 14 groups of artists from more 33 countries. The Moscow Biennale will be curated by Peter Weibel, Director of ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany.

Among famous names of the international art scene the Main project will feature artists such as Martin Walde (Australia), Ai Weiwei (China), Richard Hamilton (UK), Manabu Ikeda (Japan), Ken Lum (Canada) and Zheng Shengtian (China), Fabián Marcaccio (Argentina/USA), Walid Ra'ad (Lebanon/USA), Neo Rauch (Germany), Claire Fontaine (France), Susan Hiller (UK/USA), Rebecca Horn (Germany), Christoph Schlingensief (Germany), Olafur Eliasson (Denmark/Germany), Michael Elmgreen (Denmark) Ingar Dragset (Norway) and many others.

Russian artists will have an active part in the Biennale, exhibiting works by the Blue Soup, Electroboutique, Learning Film, as well as artists Valery Chtak, Alina Gutkina, Olga Kisseleva, Taisiya Korotkova, Taus Makhacheva, Yelena Yelagina and Igor Makarevich and others.

“Studying about 300 portfolios of Russian artists I saw a tendency for "decompression" and "deframing". In the soviet time the former generation of artists withdrew from public places to private rooms to preserve and to protect the autonomy of the artwork. By doing this they already "deframed" the artwork as a closed system and turned it into a collective experience. They in effect changed the autonomy of the artwork and also the public. The best artists of the contemporary generation benefit from this launch” – says Peter Weibel.