Report_Issue 1/2009 - Jubiläum/ 20 Jahre Mauerfall

“The history of contemporary
art in this
collection is a history
of ‘neighbourhoods’”
Outline portraits of five members of the international jury for “Kontakt. The Art Collection
of Erste Group” of contemporary and modern art: Silvia Eiblmayr, Jiří
Ševčík, Branka Stipančić, Adam Szymczyk, Georg Schöllhammer.
Jirˇí Ševčík “I expect that the collection will
fill a gap that exists in most of the museum
collections, by showing some displaced phenomena
from the subconscious. I am looking
forward to the collection containing a high
concentration of significant works of Eastern
European art, which are based on a different
reality, different experiences and different
times. The collection can also show what
we do not really want to learn about each
other. And, above all, it can provide impulses
by processing new experiences that still lie
ahead of us. By this I mean that we will have
to fit into our experience something which,
surprisingly, is also our reality, and that we
will have to learn how to live with something,
that, while it is not completely foreign, still
doesn’t correspond with established standards.”
Jiří Ševčík was, from 1962 to 1965, among other
things, editor-in-chief of the magazine Architektura CSR.
He taught at the Institute for Theory and History of Art
and Architecture in Prague School of Architecture from
1966 to 1989. Since 1996 he has been vice-rector of
the Academy of Applied Art in Prague and, in addition,
since 1997 head of the research centre and archive of
Czech art.
Silvia Eiblmayr “The study of the art of the
former socialist, now post-socialist, countries
has always formed part of my interests as a
curator, something that is also reflected in
the work on building up this collection. In this
context an experience I have regularly had
when making exhibitions should also prove
fruitful: namely, that when artistic works
are placed in a selected context or special
thematic setting they become aesthetically
productive and unlock meanings never previously
noticed. The intention is that, by means
of focussed cross-connections, the collection
should make a hermeneutic contribution to
the historic and current understanding and
interpretation of those intellectual, cultural
and political fields that the countries involved
share with each other or through which they
differ.”
Silvia Eiblmayr is an art historian. From 1988 to 2004
she worked as a lecturer at the Academy of Fine Arts
in Vienna, at the Kunsthochschule für Medien Cologne
and at Zurich University. From 1999–2008 she was director
of the Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck. In 2009
she curated the Austrian Pavilion at Biennale Venice together
with VALIE EXPORT.
Branka Stipančić “It is a known fact that
there are collections of contemporary art
in numerous Eastern and South-Eastern
European countries lying in the storerooms
because museums have no adequate buildings
in which to show such collections to the
public. Some examples are the remarkable
ArtEast Collection 2000+ of the Modern
Gallery in Ljubljana, as well as the collection
of international art of the Contemporary Art
Museum in Zagreb. I strongly believe that
the collection will connect different cultural
spaces which have, until recently, been rather
isolated and that it will present to the public
artworks that – for reasons that had nothing
to do with art – have remained unknown
for a number of years. Furthermore, I have
no doubt that the collection will encourage
numerous discussions and will contribute to a
better understanding of contemporary art.”
Branka Stipančić is an art critic and free-lance art historian
who lives and works in Zagreb (Croatia). From
1983 to 1993 she was a curator at the Museum of Contemporary
Art in Zagreb and director of the Soros Center
for Contemporary Art in Zagreb from 1993 to 1996.
Georg Schöllhammer “What particularly
interests me about this collection – in addition
to the hope that it may help to correct
a certain imbalance evident in the writing of
art history of recent decades – is the reflection
on the consequences of a ‘global cultural
flow’. The collection will thematically concentrate
something and then release it again
and allow it to work in different contexts,
also in the region of origin. And this will be
accompanied by research grants, publications,
a documentation of context material
and a well thought-out series of additional
measures that are intended to have a local
effect. Something frequently overlooked in
the current version of the universal talk about
the globalisation of art and in many private
collections is particularly important to the
founding jury: namely that the ethos of locality
is specific quality of artistic life. Our aim
would therefore be to narrate the history of
contemporary art in this collection as a history
of “neighbourhoods” i.e. of more or less
isolated and unstable systems of reference.
Adam Szymczyk “The Erste Bank Collection is
taking a distinctly different and new direction
by opening up to art from Eastern and Central
Europe. The geographic area on which the
collection focuses is not (and should not be)
too narrowly defined. Its main orientation is
art that has, to a large extent, so far escaped
the attention of major (in this case Western
European) private and public collections. We
believe that the collection could make an
important contribution towards a broader understanding
of phenomena in contemporary
art of the last forty years. Many works that
will become a part of the collection are hardly
known in Western Europe, even to art professionals.
Therefore the collection will have an
important educational aspect and, hopefully,
will make it possible to redefine some of the
existing dogmas of recent art history.”
Adam Szymczyk since 2003 has been director of the
Kunsthalle Basel. From 1994 to 1995 he was curatorial
assistant for film and video at the Centre for Contemporary
Art in Warsaw. He was also curator for the Foksal
Gallery Foundation in Warsaw from 1997 to 2003. In
the past decade he has worked on exhibitions and publications
of and about artists such as Pawel Althamer,
Douglas Gordon, Susan Hiller, Job Koelewijn, Edward
Krasinski, Piotr Uklanski, Krzysztof Wodiczko.
We hope as a result to also be able to contribute
to a history of recent art as a technique
that produces locality. At the same time we
hope that this viewpoint will help to reveal the
extent of the role played in the production of
the respective categories by artists, intellectuals,
museum experts, gallery owners, local
politics and the social, media and economic
field of tension. My hope is that, in building
up the collection over the next few years,
we may succeed in working in this direction.
Although it may sound paradoxical, I would
describe this as a political task.”
Georg Schöllhammer is director of tranzit Österreich,
a culture journalist and curator. From 1988 to 1994 he
wrote for the Austrian daily newspaper “Der Standard“.
Since 1992 Schöllhammer has lectured on the theory
of contemporary art as a visiting professor at the University
for Visual and Industrial Design in Linz, Austria. He is
editor-in-chief with responsibility for the text content of
“springerin – Hefte für Gegenwartskunst“ and the publisher
of a series of publications of documenta 12.
Published in “Report” in April 2005 (online).
91