The Empty Pedestal | Ghosts from the Eastern Europe at ARTE FIERA BOLOGNA 2014

Il Piedistallo Vuoto / The Empty Pedestal | Ghosts from the Eastern Europe 
Arte Fiera Bologna 2014 |  Museo Civico Archeologico
Curated by Marco Scotini and Giorgio Verzotti 
24 January - 16 March 2014

special opening: Monday, January 27,2014
Museo Civico Archeologico | Via dell’Archiginnasio 2, Bologna| Italy

Y. Meldibekov, N. Oris, Tashkent. Lenin, serie Family Album, 40x55 cm, 2008

photo credit: Arte Fiera , Bologna 

about the exhibition:
The 2014 edition of Bologna Arte Fiera is host Il Piedistallo vuoto/The Empty pedestal, an overview of contemporary Eastern European Art belonging to Italy’s top private art collections. The exhibition will feature around 100 large‐scale works and a selection of 40 artists among the leading representatives of the art scene before and after the fall of the Berlin wall: the last generations before and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Following the successful exhibitions, The Premises of the Past recently presented at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and Ostalgia at the New Museum in New York, the Italian exhibition echoes the same themes but with an entirely future‐oriented focus. The very title of the BolognaFiere exhibition alludes to expectation and the passage of time waiting for something still unknown to pass, and a subjectivity yet to be invented. This present‐day condition is expressed in many of the works blending reflections on a collective memory with those on an uncertain future yet to take shape.

The exhibition boasts a wealth of landmark works by artists who had not a found a space in socialist culture, including Ylia Kabakov, Vyatscheslav Akhunov, Jiri Kovanda, Julius Koller, Mladen Stilinovic, Ion Grigorescu, Nedko Solokov and the young generation of artists who have enjoyed widescale recognition with figures like Roman Ondak, Anri Sala, David Maljkovic, Pawel Althamer, Artur Zmijewski, Deimantas Narkevicius, Mircea Cantor and many others. The acclaimed young Slovenian artist Tobias Putrith has been appointed to design a small cinema in which to screen exhibition videos.

Il Piedistallo vuoto/The Empty pedestal plans to reconstruct an entire artistic geography from individual artistic figures and specific epicentres ranging from Prague, Zagabria, Bucharest, Warsavia, Tirana, Belgrade, Riga, Moscow and Saint Petersburg to locations in Central Asia including Alma Ata and Tashkent.

Julius Koller, U.F.O.-naut J.K. (U.F.O.), 1981

photo credit: Arte Fiera, Bologna

"But it won't be an exhibition on nostalgia for the past," emphasizes curator Marco Scotini, who has since long been following the protagonists of this artistic juncture, organizing many internationally acclaimed  research exhibitions. "Instead, it will be an exhibition on a context still very much alive, a potentiality." This exhibit's title alludes to the historical passage, but also a desire, populated by spectres, something that keeps returning, before even having happened. Starting from the 1970s, the exhibition spans two major periods: 1989 with the fall of the Berlin wall, and 1991 with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. Twenty years on, we shall see videos, performances, installations, photographs, drawings and paintings by many of the artists ostracized by Socialist culture, flanked by the work of the newest crop of young artists now enjoying worldwide fame. The exhibition is a broad survey of the emerging art scene already developed in the late 1990s by curator Marco Scotini in numerous Italian and international exhibitions and coming to a close with Il Piedistallo Vuoto/The empty Pedestal in the premises Bologna’s Archaeological Museum.

Elena Kovylina, Egalité, 2008, dvd video, 9', 

photo credit:  Collezione Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo; Arte Fiera Bologna

Selected artists include:  
Marina Abramovic, Vyatscheslav Akhunov, Victor Alimpiev, Pawel Althamer, Janis Avotins, Said Atabekov, Miroslav Balka, Mircea Cantor, Gintaras Didžiapetris, Thea Djordjadze, Yona Friedman, Dmitry Gutov, Ion Grigorescu, Ylia Kabakov, Július Koller, Jiri Kovanda, Elena Kovylina, Robert Kuśmirowski, Armando Lulaj, David Maljkovic, Ivan Mikhailov, Deimantas Narkevicius, Paulina Olowska, Roman Ondak, Adrian Paci, Tobias Putrih, Mladen Stilinovic, Nedko Solakov, Anri Sala, Kateřina Šedá, Monika Sosnowska, Miroslav Tichý, Jaan Toomik, Victor Man, David Ter‐Oganian, Bojan Sarcevic, Artur Zmjewski, and many others.

The collections featured in the exhibition include: the Collection Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, the Trussardi Foundation, the Enea Righi Collection, La Gaia Collection, Turin, the Maramotti Collection, Unicredit, the Dalle Nogare Collection, the Gemma Testa Collection, Giorgio Fasol’s Agiverona Collection, the Cotroneo Collection, together with other Italian brand collections.
The accompanying catalogue is published in Italian and English by Mousse publishing and includes contributions by Boris Buden, Keti Chukhrov, Vit Havranek, Marco Scotini, and Joanna Warsza.

Information
ARTE FIERA
International exhibition of modern and contemporary art

Opening times:
24 January–16 March 2014
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday, 10am–6.30pm
Saturday 25 January open until midnight
Monday 27 January special opening
Preview by invitation: Thursday 23 January, 8pm

Arte Fiera
BolognaFiere
Viale della Fiera, 20
40127 Bologna | Italy
www.bolognafiere.it