Project 2023 - Arteast Collection 2000+23

The exhibition Arteast Collection 2000+23 is, first of all, a display of selected works from the Moderna galerija’s collections, predominantly the Arteast Collection 2000+, as well as a number of proposals, concepts and ideas for works this collection should acquire by the year 2023.

Why specifically the year 2023? Because that is when Maska will publish its 200th issue, and it is this magazine that proposed our exhibition in the first place, as part of the celebrations for its 100th issue, which appears this fall. When Emil Hrvatin, Maska’s editor in chief, approached us with the idea of the Moderna galerija putting together an exhibition that would, in one way or another, include the artists the magazine has written about in all its previous issues, the challenge seemed to be one of working with a predetermined group of artists for whom this could well be their first presentation in a gallery space. Maska, after all, deals primarily with contemporary theater arts, although in the pages of the magazine these are also to a large extent intertwined with contemporary visual art.

The collaboration between the Moderna galerija and Maska was designed from the outset as a collaboration between the artists the magazine writes about and artworks from our collections.

The initial proposal, that we assemble an exhibition of previously selected artists, led Zdenka Badovinac, the exhibition curator, to the decision to relinquish the curator’s selector role entirely, thus leaving it to the “Maska artists” to also choose the artworks from the Moderna galerija’s collections; her curatorial role, meanwhile, would be constructed primarily around the following questions: Who is the one who chooses? And, to take it even further, who in fact is the true subject in the process of historicization?

The answer to this latter question depends entirely on whether we insist on historicization as a type of scientific method, and therefore an organized system, or whether we dare to conceive it as the mapping of heterogeneous ways of thinking and creating.

The Moderna galerija began systematically dealing with the processes of redefining history, the questions of the avant-garde traditions and the international context of Slovene art, predominantly related to Eastern Europe, already in 1998 with the exhibition Body and the East, and continued with starting, and in 2000 first publicly displaying, the Arteast Collection 2000+. Next followed a series of Arteast exhibitions: Form-Specific in 2003, the 7 Sins: Ljubljana—Moscow in 2004, the Interrupted Histories in 2006, while the Arteast Collection 2000+23 is the most recent in the series. While in the Interrupted Histories the artists were presented in the role of archivists, they appear in Arteast Collection 2000+23 as selectors of other artists. When Eastern European artists assume the functions of archivists, curators and selectors, they link art to a function, or a necessity, that has no parallel in the activities carried our by Western artists, even though the works may appear similar in terms of esthetics.

Nowadays we are faced, on the one hand, with the need to present the differences in the art of different spaces, and on the other, with the need for comparable systems, which seem prerequisite for a global history. The artists presented in our exhibitions historicize outside the established classification systems. They employ informal historicizing methods, either because there are no such formal methods in their spaces of origin, or because the formal methods can no longer keep up with art that increasingly evades standardized classifications.

The exhibition has been supported by: The Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, The City of Ljubljana, Pristop, Renderspace, Mediapool.

Participating artists: Marina Abramovic / Jan Mlcoch; Jérôme Bel / Vlado Martek; Goran Bertok / Nikogar iz zbirke nisem izbral / I have not chosen anyone from the collection; Dara Birnbaum / Kazimir Malevich; Mateja Bucar / S spostovanjem do zbirke Arteast 2000+ / With my true respect for the Arteast Collection 2000+ Bojana Cvejic / Julije Knifer; Deufert & Plischke / Geta Bratescu; Cristian Duarte & Thelma Bonavita / Miroslaw Balka; Eclipse / Laibach; Elmgreen & Dragset / Marko Peljhan; Tim Etchells / Tomislav Gotovac; Jo Fabian / Róza El-Hassan; Jan Fabre / Nedko Solakov; Gil & Moti / Alex Mlynárcik; Lynn Hershman / Zofia Kulik; Irwin / Ilija Soskic; Edward Janssen / Slaven Tolj; Eduardo Kac / Vuk Cosic; Kinkaleri / Joze Barsi; Mala Kline / Ilya Kabakov; Maria Klonaris & Katerina Thomadaki / Goran Petercol; Iztok Kovac / Arsen Sava dov; Laibach / Mladen Stilinovic; Tanja Lazetic / Josef Dabernig ; Eva & Franco Mattes (0100101110101101.org) / Novi kolektivizem / New Collectivism ; Nina Mesko / Ivan Kozaric; Peter Mlakar / OHO; Rabih Mroué / Vladimir Kuprijanov / Kupriyanov; Ivana Müller / Dmitrij / Dmitry Prigov; Olaf Nicolai / Sanja Ivekovic; Novi kolektivizem / New Collectivism / Vadim Fiskin; Erna Omarsdottir / Katarzyna Kozyra; Orlan / Paul Neagu; Virpi Pahkinen / Karel Miller; Marko Pogacnik / Dan Perjovschi; Nikolina & Goran Sergej Pristas / Milan Knízák; Melinda Rackham / Anish Kapoor; Andreja Rauch / Jusuf Hadzifejzovic; Vlado Repnik / Natalia LL; Jan Ritsema / Uri Tzaig; Ivani Santana / Milica Tomic; Dimitrina Sevova / Oliver Musovik; Nicolas Siepen & Tara Herbst / Aleksander / Alexandr Kosolapov; Igor Stromajer / Andrej Monastirskij / Andrei Monastirsky; Ubermorgen.com / Irwin; Brane Zorman & Irena Pivka / Lawrence Weiner; Dunja Zupancic :: Dragan Zivadinov / Edvard Stepancic; Matjaz Zupancic / Marina Abramovic

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