7th MOSCOW INTERNATIONAL BIENNALE OF CONTEMPORARY ART
Among the artists: Natalia Bazowska, Marta Górnicka
Participants of the Main Project: 52 artists from 25 countries: Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Iceland, Japan, Jordan, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the USA.
The Main project of the 7th Moscow Biennale includes works of such well-known artists as Matthew Barney, Olafur Eliasson, who make new works specially for 7th Moscow Biennale and Björk.
The Main Project of the 7th Moscow International Biennale of Contemporary Art Clouds ⇄ Forests will take place in New Tretyakov Gallery (The State Tretyakov Gallery, 10, Krymsky Val, Moscow) from 19 September 2017 to 18 January 2018. It will last for four months for the first time in the history of the Moscow Biennale.
The curator of the 7th Moscow Biennale is Yuko Hasegawa, Artistic Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, and Professor of Tokyo University of the Arts. The project Clouds⇄Forests focuses on a new eco-system formed through a circulation of “Cloud Tribes”, who were born on the Internet cloud space, and “Forest Tribes” who are born on cultural origins. The works of the artists of the Main Project will be displayed in a dialogue with works from the permanent exhibition of The State Tretyakov Gallery.
The Expert Council of Moscow Biennale was found this year and includes the heads of leading Russian museums, independent curators and representatives of non-profit foundations – Semyon Mikhailovsky (Rector of the Repin Saint Petersburg State Academic Institute of Fine Arts, Sculpture and Architecture, Commissioner of the Russian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale) ikhail Piotrovsky (Director of the State Hermitage Museum), Zelfira Tregulova (Director of the State Tretyakov Gallery), Olga Sviblova (Director of Multimedia Art Museum), Vasily Tsereteli (Executive Director of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art), Andrey Erofeyev (Co-Chairman of the Russian Section of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA); curator), Alexander Rytov (Director of Stella Art Foundation) and others. The Expert Council takes all creative decisions.
Starting from this year the Moscow Biennale introduced a system for presenting Russian artists to international curator. The curator Yuko Hasegawa received over 600 applications from Russian artists and more than 100 recommendations from the Expert Council, museums and non-profit foundations. As a result, the following artists were selected to participate in the Main Project: Alexey Martins, Anastasia Potemkina, Valya Fetisov, Dashi Namdakov, Ilya Fedotov-Fedorov and the creative association “Where Dogs Run”. They will create new works specifically for the 7th Moscow Biennale. In addition, the curator has selected works by Alexander Vinogradov and Vladimir Dubodsarsky, Alina Gutkina and Mikhail Tolmachev from Gazprombank’s contemporary Russian art collection.
The Expert Counsil of the 7th Moscow International Biennale of Contemporary Art selected 69 projects for the Parallel Program of the Biennale with 49 institutions participating. For the first time the Parallel Program introduces so many different types of institutions – from big museums to small workshops and galleries. The Parallel Program includes: Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMOMA), Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow (MAMM), the center of contemporary art “Winzavod”, VDNKh, creative association XOLST, Darwin Museum, Gary Tatintsian Gallery, Moscow State University Botanical Garden “Aptekarsky Ogorod” and others.
For the first time ever the 7th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art will be available through a free mobile app. The app will display a map with detailed guides to every venue and exhibition of the Biennale and the guided tour to the Main project of the Moscow Biennale in the New Tretyakov Gallery, including the plan of the exhibition and list of the artworks with descriptions. The app is a joint project of the Moscow Biennale, Yandex and the Moscow Polytechnic Museum. It will be available on the iOS and Android. The app is built using the technologies of the Bolshoy Muzey (i.e. the Big Museum) platform that was created to expand web-representation of museums.
The 7th Moscow Biennale will be accompanied by a series of special events, including meetings with artists, lectures and discussions. The Moscow Biennale also prepared separately a kid’s programme.
Yuko Hasegawa, curator of the Main project:
“Clouds⇄Forests focuses on artists as a creative tribe transitioning, expanding and dissipating, from forest to cloud, rebuilding the subjectivity of spectators and showing that creativity is vital to the creation of new environmental spheres. Taking into account perceptions on the generation of new subjective environmental spheres, the curatorial criteria for this exhibition includes giving life to new technologies as well as exploring ways to obtain animistic artistic languages and connect cultural roots, and leveraging the rhizome-based organic system to traverse history, genres, and media”.
Julia Muzykantskaya, the president of the Moscow International Biennale of Contemporary Art:
“This year marks the 7th Moscow International Biennale of Contemporary Art. The Biennale was fully relaunched which a brought a new momentum to the development to the project. First and foremost, because from now the work of the Moscow Biennale is determined by the creative community: the newly established Expert Council of the Biennale makes all the creative decisions and closely cooperates with the curator, that it has selected. The artist statement created by this collaboration will be presented in the New Tretyakov Gallery. This is a new venue for the Biennale that brings about the new level of responsibility but opens broad opportunities nonetheless. Our objective is to show that contemporary art is actually simple and accessible to everyone. The fact that this year most is the Moscow museums, galleries and exhibition spaces take part in the Biennale only testifies that contemporary art is the significant part of cultural life”.
Zelfira Tregulova, Director General of the State Tretyakov Gallery:
“Moscow Biennale of Contemporary art is very significant event for the city Moscow. That is why the Tretyakov Gallery is happy to host the Main project of the Biennale this year. We have always participated is this truly large-scale event and every time presented to the guests of the Moscow Biennale an exhibition of contemporary art as well as artworks that bear special significance for the present day. It is hardly necessary to say that State Tretyakov Gallery holds probably the most compelling collection of works in Russia related this time-period. We have always tried our best to keep up with the times. Let us not forget that the founder of the Gallery Pavel Tretyakov used to collect the works that mostly represented the art that was contemporary in his era. Of course, hosting Moscow Biennale in the halls of the Treyiakov Gallery is the special responsibility for us. The theme of the 7th Moscow Biennale is Clouds ⇄ Forests, the combination of high-tech with something primary, something that existed from the very beginning, always and everywhere. We are delighted by the fact that this concept is created by Yuko Hasegawa, a prominent Japanese curator and the Art-Director of the Tokyo Museum of Contemporary Art. We are very keen to see how the Biennale will be merged into the space of the New Tretyakov Gallery on Krymsky Val that exhibits a wide collection of Russian art from the avant-garde of the early XX century to the latest movements of the present day.
From this year the Moscow Biennale has the Expert Council which includes the heads of leading Russian museums, independent curators and representatives of non-profit foundations – Mikhail Piotrovsky (Director of the State Hermitage Museum), Zelfira Tregulova (Director of the State Tretyakov Gallery), Olga Sviblova (Director of Multimedia Art Museum), Vasily Tsereteli (Executive Director of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art), Andrey Erofeyev (Co-Chairman of the Russian Section of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA); curator), Alexander Rytov (Director of Stella Art Foundation) and others. The Expert Council takes all creative decisions.”
The participants of the Main Project
The participants of Parallel Program