JOINT EXHIBITION OF YOUNG VISUAL ARTISTS AWARDS WINNERS Belgrade, Serbia, 2008 Belgrade, Serbia 2008 Belgrade, Joint Exhibition Of Young Visual Artists Awards Winners Artists Awards Visual Joint Exhibition Of Young Joint Exhibition Of Young Visual Artists Awards Winners July 12 - 25, 2008 Magacin, Kraljevića Marka 4 Belgrade, Serbia Artists: Irgin Sena (ARDHJE Award, Albania), Mladen Miljanović (ZVONO Award, Bosnia and Herzegovina), Vedran Perkov (Radoslav Putar Award, Croatia), Barbora Klímová (Jindřich Chalupecký Award, Czech Republic), Bekim Gllogu (Artist of Tomorrow Award, Kosovo), Boris Petrovski (Denes Award, Macedonia), Katarina Zdjelar (Dimitrije Bašićević Mangelos Award, Serbia), Lucia Nimcová (Oskár Čepan Award, Slovakia), Luiza Margan and Miha Presker (OHO Award, Slovenia) Exhibition Organizers: The Foundation for a Civil Society, New York, Dez.org and Kontekst, Belgrade Main Partner: Supporters: www.yvaa.net YOUNG VISUAL ARTISTS AWARDS WEBSITE Get information on all awards in 10 countries, contacts and portfolios of awarded artists and fi nalists, and follow related news. Supported by: screen by rgb screen Dear Friends, It is very exciting that the Third Joint Exhibition of the circumstances is not only the renowned Chalupecký Award Young Visual Artists Awards (YVAA) is being hosted by the in the Czech Republic, but the expansion of the YVAA to nine Kontekst Gallery and DEZ ORG, Belgrade, Serbia. It is very other countries, The model, created in 1990 with President signifi cant and challenging as well as a tribute to the program Václav Havel and a dedicated group of Czechs, was designed that young artists from nine Central and South Eastern to establish an open and transparent competition without European countries (Albania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, the nepotism and favoritism of communist days. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, The Model: it provides a young artist under 35 not only Serbia and Slovenia) are exhibiting their prize winning work with the opportunity to have a joint exhibition of the fi nalists in Belgrade at this crucial time. Plus, the organizers from at a prestigious gallery or museum in his or her own country all those countries plus the newest addition, Bulgaria, are presented by the local organizers, but also to travel to the meeting in Belgrade with the YVAA artists, the guest critics United States to the International Studio and Curatorial and curators from Europe, the US and Istanbul to discuss the Program (ISCP) and to participate in the dynamic art scene activities of the Center for Exchange in Visual Arts: exciting in New York. Following the return from the US, he/she has new collaborations, travel and cooperative projects. a solo exhibition in his own country. It has become a truly The History: I had the great privilege of living in Prague signifi cant award and most of the artists are represented in from 1983 to 1986 when my husband, William Luers, was the major collections in their countries and oſt en participate in American Ambassador. Those were dark days of communism important biennials and other international arts events. and isolation. We hosted prominent American painters Since 1990, The Foundation for a Civil Society, with and writers at the magnifi cent American Ambassador's generous funding from the Trust for Mutual Understanding, Residence and invited their translators and colleagues, who has managed the US part of the fellowship, receiving the were the "dissidents" opposing communism, to meet them. artists, arranging their program and travel. Each country's We knew then that independent thinkers and fascinating organizing committee conducts the in-country competition, people occupied the artistic space in closed communist the exhibitions, the fund raising and the award ceremony. Czechoslovakia. Among them were Václav and Olga Havel, We were so impressed and excited by the quality of the art historians Jindřich Chalupecký and Jiří Šetlík, and artists artists, their work and their enthusiasm for the opportunity Joska Skalník and Theodor Pištěk. in the early years that we decided to replicate the model fi rst The legacy of Jindřich Chalupecký's heroic commitment in Slovakia, and then in the other Central and South Eastern to keeping contemporary art alive in the most diffi cult of European countries. In 2006, the Slovak Foundation/Center for Contemporary Art received a grant from the European Cultural Foundation on behalf of all the YVAA organizers which supports a comprehensive website exhibiting the work of all the winners and fi nalists, as well as providing information and opportunities for travel, competitions, and collaboration. It provides a place where international curators, collectors, galleries and organizers of arts events can view their work and contact them. I would like to take this opportunity to especially thank our hosts, Ivana Marjanovi, Vida Kneevi and Jelena Radi of Kontekst Gallery and DEZ ORG, Belgrade, for all their hard work and hospitality; to ERSTE Foundation and Boris Marte for their support of this exhibition, this catalogue and the curators, critics and artists travel; and to the US Embassy and Ambassador Cameron Munter and Marilyn Wyatt. In addition, thank you to Irena Kovarova, FCS’s YVAA Program Director, Barbora Pizlova and to the Trust for Mutual Understanding (TMU) for their loyal and essential support since 1991. Wendy Newton and Carrie Thompson of the TMU will be in Belgrade representing their director, Richard Lanier. CONGRATULATIONS!! Wendy W. Luers President, The Foundation for a Civil Society June 2008, New York City Joint Exhibition of Young Visual Artists Awards Winners 5 Like its two predecessors, the third joint exhibition of he inserted his own image to a portrait of a rock group the winners of the prize for young artists from Eastern and Coldplay, pretending to be another member of the band, or Central Europe is indeed a colorful undertaking. Artists from he surrounded himself with smiling panda bears. He used Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Czech Republic, Croatia, global language of traffi c signs to comment on local social Kosovo, Macedonia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Serbia oſt en situation. employ very diverse manners of expression. Diverse, too, The use of digital technologies has become widespread are the themes they address in their works. Their countries in Eastern Europe, particularly in countries where there of origin have had similar experience with totalitarian was not a strong tradition of modern art. Albania’s Irgin regimes. In contrast with the generation of their fathers, Sena uses the video camera as a tool for recording subtle however, these young artists have in common both artistic moments of personal signifi cance, as well as a device which and civic freedom. This is a prerequisite for a critical inquiry apart from a subjective atmosphere captures the broader into social issues that forms – along with the discarding symbolic meaning of everyday occurrences. of traditional painting and sculpture – probably the most It is not just information and technologies that freely striking common trait in the works of artists in the present trot the globe; it is, above all, people. As the biographies of exhibition. each artist represented in the exhibition show, nearly all of Artists of Eastern and Central Europe are no longer in them have lived abroad, either in study-abroad programs the position of an uninformed and exotic endemic species. or as artists in residence. Such experiences lead to a need The world is far more open to them than even the wildest to bring one’s own cultural context closer to those not optimists dared imagine a mere two decades ago. Boris familiar with it. Seemingly naive in their documentary style, Petrovski lives in Macedonia. The street-art approaches the photographs of Lucia Nimcová from Slovakia are he employs in his work, however, are global currency reminiscent of amateur snapshots. The sharp iridescence intelligible everywhere, just like the techno-parties for of the photographic fl ash reveals not only the visual aspect which he creates sets. His gallery works, too, draw on the of her homeland, but also the social structures, which, in geographically and historically unlimited arsenal of cultural spite of political transformation in the last decades, have references. hardly changed at all. More critical and at the same time humorous is Bekim The works of the artistic duo Luiza Margan and Miha Gllogu from Kosovo. He is trained as a painter, but works Presker from Slovenia remind one of scientifi c experiments. in other media as well. On his large photo realistic canvases The objects of their inquiry are various biological systems - but simultaneously also human nature. Their installations Her revisiting and reenacting of the works of Czech frequently use an overhead projector. In their rendition it is performance artists of the 1970s was prompted by an eff ort not just a technical device, the projector becoming instead to better understand her own tradition and at the same time a metaphor of the visualization of the issue they explore. to show how radically the context in which artists worked If they let live ants create a moving social ornaments, they then and now has changed. It is for this reason that her undoubtedly also tell us something about people. project is relevant not only to local viewers but is also able The lives of some artists are closely shaped by their to reach out to international audiences. unique life experiences. Mladen Miljanović from Bosna In his extensive oeuvre, Vedran Perkov from Croatia and Herzegovina went through a military school and army carries on a critical dialogue with all of 20th-century culture. training. Although later he leſt the army, it remained the He freely appropriates artistic tendencies as well as pop main subject of his work as an artist. His oeuvre fuses his cultural icons. He pays tribute to them while mocking them, own experiences with the image of the army as refl ected testing the endurance of each one of them.