Curators' Network - Comisarios

Erik Berg is a curator and director currently working in the Swedish performance group Poste Restane. Poste Restante makes interactive performances where the visitor’s individual experience and active participation is the focal point. The works consist of honest yet unexpected constructed activities, where every single part of the space, every wardrobe and cleaning closet is available to the visitors. These activities may be evening classes in the art of socializing with strangers or an institution that provides secular rooms for religious introspection.

Eriks practice focuses on audience relations, site/situation-specifics and performance. After working with institutions such as international residency program "Iaspis" (Swedish Arts grants committee), as a producer and assistng other artists, Erik joined Mossutställningar, a small art production organization that focus on producing specific projects outside of traditional institutional frameworks. With Mossutställningar Erik produced exibitions by artists such as Gelitin (AT) and Matti Kallioinen (SE). Erik also works as an art-educationalist and a lecturer.

www.poste-restante.se
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZiIcIAGp7s&

Didem Ozbek is an artist and designer living in Istanbul. She co-directs, together with the artist Osman Bozkurt, PiST/// Interdisciplinary Project Space. PiST/// is a non-profit, independent art space that opened in 2006. “Pist”, when translated from Turkish, refers a place that is used for a specific purpose by a specific object or type of person. Ozbek and Bozkurt, too, strive to make their art space specific to the people that use it by encouraging experimentation, dialogue, movement and collaboration between visitors, artists and art professionals through regular exhibitions and events.

Ozbek organized many projects for PiST/// such as “PARK, PiST///” a stand at Frieze Art Fair (2008), The Armory Show (2010) and No Soul For Sale (Tate Modern, 2010). She has also developed and created many conceptual projects for PiST/// and also writes and designs for the PiST/// publications.

PiST/// started an international research and production in residency program named as P_RP_R (read as PIRPIR) in January 2011.

http://www.pist.org.tr
http://www.pist-org.blogspot.com
http://www.istanbulartlist.com

Marita Muukkonen works as a curator at HIAP - The Helsinki International Artist Programme. HIAP is one of the largest international residency centres in northern Europe focusing primarily on visual art but are also open to artists, curators and thinkers from various disciplines. Among the international-profile events she curates at HIAP, HIAP TALKS have drawn a distinguished line-up from around the world.

Together with the French-US curator Ivor Stodolsky, Marita Muukkonen runs the curatorial vehicle Perpetuum Mobile, which they describe as a "conduit and engine to bring together art, practice and inquiry.” Projects, among others, have included the Perpetual Pavilion (Venice 2009) and The Arts Assembly (Manifesta 8).

In previous years, Marita worked for several contemporary art institutions such as FRAME, the journal FRAMEWORK and NIFCA - The Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art.

www.hiap.fi
www.PerpetualMobile.org

Xenia Kalpaktsoglou is a curator, one third of the curatorial trio XYZ and co-director of the Athens Biennale. In collaboration with artist Poka-Yio and curator/art-critic Augustine Zenakos, she co-founded in 2005 the Athens Biennale Non-Profit Organization, with the intention to provide a constant platform for discourse, through various projects, publications, networks, and online magazines.

Independently she has curated exhibitions in Greece and abroad and has contributed to various publications and artists catalogues. Currently she is co-curating the 3rd Athens Biennale 2011 MONODROME with Nicolas Bourriaud and Poka-Yio. From 2006 until 2008, she was the director of the DESTE Foundation, Centre for Contemporary Art, Athens.

www.athensbiennial.org
www.xyzprojects.org/

Mark Briggs is an artist based in Glasgow. He has worked on the committee board of Transmission Gallery since 2010. Established in 1983 in response to the scarcity of spaces for artists in the early stages of their careers to exhibit in Glasgow, the gallery maintains a commitment to a collective ethos.

Transmission is widely recognized as a unique artist-run, a collective visual arts enterprise in the UK and beyond for both its 28 years of activity and its rich and diverse program. By both supporting the dynamic local community of artists and exhibiting the work of international practitioners the gallery aims to build upon its already substantial reputation and continue to keep the eyes of the art world on the city of Glasgow.

In conjunction with the exhibition program, Transmission offers a number of talks, discussions and lectures aimed at widening participation and understanding of contemporary art and in particular the work of the exhibiting artists. The gallery provides a crucial context for practice to develop and broaden outside the pressures of a commercial art world.

http://www.transmissiongallery.org/

André Sousa and Mauro Cerqueira are the organizers of “Uma certa falta de coerência” (A Certain Lack of Coherence), an artist-run space that serves for the exhibition and discussion of art-related projects located at Rua dos Caldeireiros, no. 77, Porto. Before being occupied by André Sousa and Mauro Cerqueira this place was a restaurant, an Indian products store and even a ballpoint pen collector tried to establish a shop here. At the end of this very narrow street of Porto's historical centre, the sun barely touches the street's cobbles and humidity is an all-year problem. Therefore, the conditions for the preservation of Art, or works of art, could not be worse. However, André and Mauro deem that these adverse conditions are also the most stimulating for the existence of art.
Uma certa falta de coerência opened in 2008 and has since developed a continuous program of exhibitions. Andre Sousa and Mauro Cerqueira, both artists themselves, have initiated previous similar projects throughout the city of Porto since the 90s, a gesture, they deem continuously essential for the city itself as well as its cultural life.

Leila Topic works as a curator in Zagreb's Museum of Contemporary Art (MSU), in charge of three collections: film and video, photography and media art. At the moment she is preparing an exhibition of French regional museums of contemporary art titled “L’amour du risqué” for April 2012. The MSU was founded in 1954 with the intention of collecting, presenting and fostering local and international contemporary art. Since that year the Museum's collection includes some twelve thousand contemporary artworks, created by Croatian and international artists between 1950 and the present day. Due to this huge collection and in need for more storage space, the MSU moved to a new building, located in the new part of town, and opened in December 2009. It has 1500 square meters for temporary exhibitions and 3000 square meters for permanent display.
The current policy of the staff is to attract the broadest public through the activities organized by the museum. “We would like to think of the Museum as a living room, a space where all will feel at home, not just the public but also the international artists and curators who are collaborating with us.”

The curatorial work of David Armengol focuses on an analysis of the status of the artist as well as on his/her function for and within the society. His current research is reflected in projects such as “La gesta imposible” (The impossible Exploit) Madrid, 2010) and La Gran Aventura (The Great Adventure) Barcelona, 2011. Currently he is organizing the Concurs d’Arts Visuals Premi Miquel Casablancas – an art prize dedicated to the young art scene in Spain – and he is the co-ordinator and director of A*Study 2011-2012 (a program of advanced studies on contemporary art) in A*Desk, Independent Institute of Contemporary Art and Criticism. Also, he’s preparing “Perplexitat” (On Perplexity), a curatorial project for Fundació Joan Miró (Barcelona) that will be shown during 2012-2013.

www.davidarmengol.net
www.adesk.org
www.sacontemporani.org

David Barro (Ferrol, 1974) works as an independent curator and editor of DARDO. Since 1998 he has worked as an art critic for El Cultural (El Mundo) and since 2006 is director of the art magazine DARDO. He is artistic assessor for the Barrie Foundation and also signs responsible for the foundation's collection. David Barro has been artistic director of the art fair Espacio Atlántico (2010) and worked as a professor at the University of Porto (2000-2006). He also worked as an editor for a long row of Spanish art magazines such as [W]art (2003-2005), Arte y Parte (1998-1999), InteresArte (1998-2002) as well as artistic director of the project Look Up! Natural Art Show at Porto (2010) and artistic director of the International Festival of Sustainable Artistic Action SOS 4.8, Murcia (2011).

As a curator he has conducted 35 individual and 33 group exhibitions, featuring artists such as Julian Opie, Caio Reisewitz, Sandra Cinto and Chafes Rui. As editor of DARDO, he has coordinated more than 60 books over the past 5 years, featuring monographies on artists such as Ulrich Rückriem or Jannis Kounellis.

Javier Hontoria is arts critic and independent curator. Since 1999, he writes for the cultural supplement "El Cultural" of the national Spanish newspaper “El Mundo” and coordinates its international exhibition section. Javier is a regular contributor to art-magazines such as Artforum (USA), MAP Magazine (UK) or the Spanish publications Dardo and A-Desk. Lately he has curated the exhibition of Ignacio Uriarte, entitled "Works", at Sala Rekalde (Bilbao) which is on show till October 2011. His publications include the essay "Bas Jan Ader: Between Two Lands", published in 2010 by the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea.

Áron Fenyvesi is curator and art writer. Since 2011 he is the leading curator of the Trafó Gallery. Trafó Gallery is located in the Trafó House of Contemporary Arts, a multifunctional arts center. The building giving home to Trafó used to be the electrical transformer station for south Pest. Trafó Gallery specializes in current trends in contemporary arts.

Áron Fenyvesi is a member and ex-secretary of the Studio of Young Artists’ Association, Budapest and a member of the board of AICA, section Hungary. Fenyvesi was nominated for the Lorenzo Bonaldi EnterPrize in 2009, and he curated many exhibitions in Hungary focusing on the local emerging art scene.

Anca Mihuleţ has a master degree in art theory from the University of Fine Arts in Bucarest and since 2006 works as an art critic and curator at the Contemporary Art Gallery of the National Brukenthal Museum in Sibiu. Anca Mihuleț was awarded research scholarships from Kulturbehörde in Hamburg (2007) or KulturKontakt Austria (2008). Together with Liviana Dan, Anca Mihuleț organized the contemporary art projects during the program “Sibiu 2007, European Capital of Culture”. She deals also on a theoretical level with questions on public space and institutional research, museum strategies, visual inquiry and analytic artistic approach.

http://www.brukenthalmuseum.ro/contemporana_en/index.html

Tomasz Gutkowski (born in 1979 in Warsaw) - is cultural manager and organizer of several photographic exhibitions at home and abroad. He is one of the founders of the Foundation of Visual Arts, Director of Photomonth, co-founder of Gallery ZPAF i S-ka and co-founder and long time editor of the fotopolis.pl portal. He teaches Cultural Managment at the Jagiellonian University (Krakow) and in the National Film School of Lodz

http://www.photomonth.com/index.php/en/page/1/aktualnosci.html

Pablo Lag is a museology specialist. Since its opening in 2009, Pablo Lag is the project manager of La Conservera, the Contemporary Art Center of Murcia. La Conservera (located in Ceutí, near Murcia), takes its name from the use of the building as a canned food factory, has undergone a major refurbishment project led by the architect Fernando de Retes, providing capacity for four large exhibition rooms. The centre’s activities consist of successive series of four (mainly site specific) exhibitions, that are thematically related and which are shown simultaneously.

At La Conservera, Pablo Lag has curated exhibitions such as "Yawar Mallku (Royalty, Abduction & Exile)" featuring William Cordova; "Remixes: Arqueología de las pistas de Baile" featuring Eduardo Balanza or "Aladas almas" featuring Jorge Peris.

Before enrolling with La Conservera Pablo Lag has been responsible for: "8'5'10 '"at ARCOmadrid. He also received a scholarship of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in 2006 and was the assistant of the show of Felix Gonzalez-Torres at the US Pavilion of the 52nd Biennial of Venice.

Delia Popa has studied art at the National University of Art in Bucharest, Goldsmiths College in London and at the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA 2007). Presently her work seeks to be an investigation into the relationship between spiritual pursuits and social activism as observed in people close to her, and the existential questions such activities might pose.

Recently, Delia Popa’s work has been exhibited at General Public, Berlin (2011), the 5th International Video Art Biennial in Tel Aviv, (2010), the Romanian Cultural Institute in Venice (2010) and at the International Center for Contemporary Art in Bucharest (2009).

Together with Anca Mihulet she has curated “A Collector’s Room” at the National Museum of History in Bucharest (2011) and together with Ellen Rothenberg she has organized the workshop “Chicago-Bucharest: A Conversation on Publics, Art and Collaboration” at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest (2010).

Delia Popa lives and works in Bucharest.

Borbála Szalai is a curator and the current secretary of the Studio of Young Artists’ Association (SYAA), where she has been working since 2008.

The SYAA is a non-profit organisation that always tries to give dynamic responses to current art and social issues, with the intention to facilitate the emergence and work of its members (450 artists and curators) in their artistic life. SYAA fosters the establishment of professional contacts, the members’ presence in Hungarian and international exhibitions and residencies, and it provides them with informational and organizational support. SYAA also helps Hungarian and foreign curators and artists to get in contact and build new collaborations.

In her curatorial work, Borbála Szalai focuses especially on emerging artists from Central Europe, approaching the region as a coherent whole. She made exhibitions in Paris, Prague and Budapest.

Ruben Barroso, Victoria Rodriguez and Juan Antonio Jara are the founders and directors of SIERRA Art Center. SIERRA is located in the countryside of Huelva (South Spain), in the municipality of Santa Ana la Real.

SIERRA started operating quite recently, on July 2nd 2010, and has been conceived to be a permanent space that fosters art and creativity in the environment of the Sierra de Huelva. It is dedicated to production, exhibition, teaching and training, and to the research into artistic proposals concerned with action (interventions in space, performance, art and sound experimentation, research and documentation, exhibition and production of artistic-environmental projects, artistic education and artistic residences ...). Currently, SIERRA Arts Center is working in preparation for the FMALE route, an international project supported by the European Union for the construction of a route for interventions in the natural space by 5 female artists from Israel, Brazil, Norway and Spain.This project includes residencies, interventions, document processes, the opening of exhibition space and working with local people ... until the inauguration in March 2012.

Andrea Löbel is the Director of Kunsthalle Exnergasse.

The Kunsthalle Exnergasse (KEX), located in the “WUK Werkstätten- und Kulturhaus” in Vienna defines itself as an open platform and exhibition space for the presentation and realization of projects belonging to innovative, experimental and contemporary art in its most different formats and forms. The Kunsthalle Exnergasse is not commercially oriented and has regarded itself from the beginning as a place dedicated particularly to the artist and the artists´ needs.The exhibition programme is selected by an Advisory Panel in cooperation with Kunsthalle Exnergassse. Interdisciplinary events are held within the programme of exhibitions in the 400 square meter space, such as symposiums, lectures, readings, concerts and catalogue presentations.

Andrés Galeano is an artist and curator. He currently works as a curator of the performance art program Extension Series at Grimmuseum, Berlin. Grimmuseum is a non-profit artist-run exhibition space and platform for visual, performance and sound art. Since opening its doors on January 2010, the venue has featured shows from more than 150 international artists.

Extension Series focuses on emerging and established international artists, who are exploring and extending the boundaries of performance art, using in an innovative way the traditional elements of performance: space, time, artist's body, actions, objects and the relation with the audience. Extension Series invites in residence two artists every 6 weeks to work site-specific for 7 days.It challenges invited artists to develop and exhibit new works, to discuss their positions with the audience and research new methodologies in the documentation of the performance.

Besides his curatorial work, Andrés Galeano works with drawing, photography, video, installation and performance and has realized exhibitions all over Europe and in Canada. For more info: www.andresgaleano.eu and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qD25RkOpsBA

Lukasz Trzcinski is a documentary photographer and member of
the curatorial board of the Photomonth festival in Krakow (since 2006).
Twice winner of the 'Pictures of the Year International' competition, he has been working in over 40 countries, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Indonesia, Russia and the Middle East. His key works comprise essays from practically all countries from the
former Eastern Bloc. For his "New Europe" project exhibition at L'Espace Photographique Contretype (Brussels) he was nominated to the 2012 Deutsche Börse Prize.
Besides his photographic work, Lukasz Trzcinski is also running the photographers agency Visavis.pl and the Imago Mundi Foundation, which aims to promote the popularisation of works of visual arts, especially photography. For that purpose the foundation is using non-conventional exhibition methods and new media

Mariana Serranova lives in Prague and is an independent curator, art critic and editor.
Throughout her career she has collaborated with several galleries and initiatives working in the field of contemporary art, including Jelení Gallery, Centre for Contemporary Arts Prague, Futura Gallery, 4 +4 Days in Motion Festival and tranzit.cz. She writes for several Czech newspapers and art magazines (A2, Umelec International, Photographer, FlashArt CZ, Revue Labyrint, etc) and has published articles in several catalogs.

Recently, Mariana Serranova has been the curator of the Czech Section of the Prague Biennale 5 (2011), along with Vjera Borozan. Currently, she works with Artyčok.tv cu an international research platform and online video portal that aims to encourage an intercultural dialogue between artists, curators and the public.

Yael Messer (1982) is a curator based in Amsterdam. She is co-founder and member of the collective The Living Room(s), a group of artists and cultural mediators engaging with social change, collective action and the practice of everyday life.

Messer holds a bachelor degree in Multidisciplinary art studies from Tel-Aviv University and a post-graduate diploma in curating from Goldsmith College, London. She Graduated from De Appel curatorial program in 2010 were she co-curated the exhibitions I’m Not here An Exhibition Without Francis Alÿs (Amsterdam 2010). Recent curated Projects and exhibitions: Film program for Social Housing, Housing the Social, symposia initiated by SKOR | Foundation for Art and Public Domain (Amsterdam 2011) Possibly Here, Sommer Contemporary Art, (Tel- Aviv, 2011) and Fucking Tourists, (Athens, 2009).

Recent projects by The Living Room(s): https://livingroomamsterdam.wordpress.com/
https://www.facebook.com/livingroomamsterdam

Comisarios

Erik Berg

Didem Ozbek

Marita Muukkonen

Xenia Kalpaktsoglou

Mark Briggs

Cerqueira Sousa

Leila Topic

David Armengol

David Barro

Javier Hontoria

Áron Fenyvesi

Anca Mihulet

Tomasz Gutkowski

Pablo Lag

Delia Popa

Borbála Szalai

Rubén Barroso

Andrea Löbel

Andrés Galeano

Lukasz Trzcinski

Mariana Serranova

Yael Messer

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