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12/2/2002

ARCO 02

Institucion Ferial, Madrid

ARCO SELECTS 250 GALLERIES FOR ITS 21st EDITION
The International Contemporary Art Fair has finalised the official programming for its 21st edition, to be held from 14-19 February. A total of 250 galleries from around the world have been selected to participate in ARCO'02, one of the most important venues on the international art market today. The quality of the work to be shown, the reputation of the artists, and the presentation of a wide variety of trends have been the primary criteria for selecting the galleries at ARCO'02, which will, once again, put the spotlight on the current art scene's most innovative visions. Along with these exhibitions, the Fair's groundbreaking Panel Discussions programme will bring together 200 of the art world's leading personalities, at one of the most important professional gatherings on the international circuit.

This selection, culled by an international Organising Committee from 498 applicants, will provide a grand tour of today's international art scene. From the Historic Avant-Garde to the Modern Masters, through Contemporary and Experimental, up to the Emerging Art of the early 21st century -- every style will be on display, represented by work from the hands of nearly 4000 artists. In addition, 20 prestigious curators from five continents will provide their own fascinating perspectives at ARCO's thematic sections, Project Rooms and Cutting Edge, renowned as spaces for experimentation, presenting the latest from the art world's up-and-coming countries.

At this edition of ARCO, architecture will be one of the cornerstones. A special new feature will be the Ephemeral Architecture Project, developed by a multidisciplinary team led by the architect Vicente Salvador. The Fair's new location within the Parque Ferial Juan Carlos I, in its Pavilions 7 and 9, have made it possible for them to create a fascinating new design for ARCO's layout, which aims to prioritise the art object, raising the concept of space above that of the average trade show to a level of museum quality. In addition, the relationship between Art and Architecture will be explored in-depth during six Panel Discussions featuring prestigious international architects, along with the American artist James Turrell, one of the world's principal investigators in space and light.

Another new feature will be the participation of Australia as the Fair's annual Special Guest Country, the focal point of ARCO'02 programming, which will present its visitors with a new vision of the artistic diversity Down Under. The curator of AUSTRALIA AT ARCO'02, Paul Greenaway, an art dealer, has selected the galleries and artists to be shown at an exhibition titled Australia with the rest of the world. Three other Curated Programmes are sure to be another centre of interest. The very latest in today's emerging art will be on show as part of ARCO's annual CUTTING EDGE section, which will bring together more than 50 galleries from around the world. The Far East, the Nordic Countries, the Caribbean, and four of the major experimental art centres -- Paris, Milan, New York, and Tokyo -- will provide the section's geographic framework. The PROJECT ROOMS section is another of ARCO's international hallmarks, which over the last five years has consolidated its status as one of the Fair's most innovative initiatives. Frontiers is the title of this selection of 30 site-specific pieces, created especially for ARCO, by artists from a variety of countries. In addition to these special sections, the second edition of the ALTADIS PUBLIC ART/OPEN SPACES programme will present a major international selection of sculptural work conceived as functional artistic objects for urban space, curated by Jérome Sans and Nicolas Bourriaud, director and co-director, respectively, of the Parisian Palais de Tokyo.

At ARCO'02, 40% of the participating galleries will be from Spain - 95, from all over the country - and the remaining 60% - 155 galleries -- from 30 other countries. Some of these, such as Malaysia, Finland, Norway, and Russia, were not represented at ARCO'01. Others, even though no newcomers to the Fair, have greatly increased their participation, including Germany, with 20 galleries; Australia, France, and Italy, with 16 each; and Portugal (14 galleries) and the USA (10 galleries).

Members of the ARCO'02 Organising Committee include representatives from Spanish and international art galleries, and from museums and art institutes. Spanish galleries represented are: Galería María Martín (Madrid), Polígrafa (Barcelona), Galería Joan Gaspar (Barcelona), Galería Alejandro Sales (Barcelona), Galería Helga De Alvear (Madrid), Galería Tomás March (Valencia), Galería Pepe Cobo (Seville), Fúcares (Madrid and Almagro-Ciudad Real) And Galería Miguel Marcos (Barcelona and Zaragoza). The International galleries are: Fortes Vilaça (Sao Paulo-Brazil), Ruth Benzacar Galería De Arte (Buenos Aires), Omr (Mexico City), Studio Guenzani (Milan, Italy), Gmurzynska (Cologne, Germany), Gebauer (Berlin), Anthony Reynolds Gallery (London), Sandra Gering Gallery (New York City), and The Greenaway Art Gallery: Adelaide (Kent Town, Adelaide-Australia). The Museums and Art Institutes include: Conde Duque Cultural Centre, Banco de España Collection, La Casa Encendida, Reina Sofía National Art Centre, Extremaduran And Ibero-American Museum of Contemporary Art, Atlantic Centre for Modern Art, Artium - Basque Contemporary Art Museum, Castellón Contemporary Art Space, Valladolid Museum and Contemporary Art Collection, Strasbourg Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, and The Barcelona Contemporary Art Museum.

ARCO'02 GEARS UP FOR ONE OF THE ART WORLD'S TOP PROFESSIONAL EVENTS, WITH AUSTRALIA AS ITS GUEST OF HONOUR
Approximately 200 of the global art scene's leading figures will participate in the Panel Discussions at the 21st ARCO International Contemporary Art Fair

From 14-19 February 2002, the 21st edition of the International Contemporary Art Fair, ARCO'02, will be held in Madrid. One of the art world's most innovative sales events, at its core is the programming of 262 galleries from around the world. This selection, culled by an international Organising Committee from 498 applicants, will offer visitors an up-to-the-minute look at -- as well as a chance to buy -- the best and the brightest and the latest, highlighting emerging art and the hottest countries on the international art scene today. Others involved in organising ARCO'02 are 20 curators from five continents, who will present their proposals in the Fair's thematic sections, renowned as experimental spaces, ideal for studying the newest discourses in art.

The next edition of ARCO will bring together approximately 200 of the international art scene's leading personalities, participants in the Fair's Panel Discussions, one of the most important professional gatherings held today. The Panel Discussions will feature major collectors; directors, curators, managers, and others from the world's great museums and art centres; and prestigious critics and opinion-makers. Such a unique event makes ARCO more than a cultural happening or a sales venue -- it lifts ARCO to the level of a key professional meeting place, unique on the art-fair circuit, whose impact has grown steadily over the years. This is largely because of its decisive influence on the genesis of highly interesting collaborative projects and art deals, especially involving the co-production of major exhibitions.

A special new feature of ARCO'02 will be its Ephemeral Architecture Project. Due to Feria de Madrid's recent expansion, the Fair's new location within the Parque Ferial Juan Carlos I, its Pavilions 7 and 9, have enabled the architect Vicente Salvador and his multidisciplinary team to create a fascinating new design for the ARCO's layout, exploring the relationship between art and space. Sublimating the concept of space, making it comparable to that of a museum exhibition, has been the object of this new ephemeral architecture project, which aims to prioritise the art object, adapting light and space to each one of the pieces on show, and taking part in the process of communicating art, heightening the public's capacity to appreciate it.

Architecture, then, will be one of the cornerstones of ARCO'02. The current boom in architecturally-based work on the art-show circuit, together with the openness of today's architecture to artistic, innovative design, have led to this discipline's integration into ARCO, as part of a deep reflection on Art and Architecture, and Art and Space. These themes will be explored in-depth during six Panel Discussions, which will feature, among others, such prestigious, internationally-known architects as Adam Caruso (UK), Ana María Torres (EE.UU./Spain),Tony Fretton (The Netherlands), and Cedric Price (UK), and with a very special guest, the American artist James Turrell, one of the principal investigators in the world of space and light.

The art shown at ARCO will provide a grand tour of the 20th century's major art movements. From the Historic Avant-Garde to the Modern Masters, through Contemporary and Experimental, up to the Emerging Art of the early 21st century -- every style will be on display, represented by work from the hands of nearly 4000 artists. Apart from this historic variety, ARCO's great international renown, and reputation as an innovative event, springs from its role as a launch pad for the newest trends and aesthetic currents in international art today.

Within this context, and in addition to the wide range of selected exhibiting galleries at the core of ARCO'02, its Curated Programmes will revolve around four major thematic sections. The most important of these, ARCO's annual Special Guest Country Pavilion, will be devoted to Australia, presenting the Spanish public with a new vision of the artistic diversity Down Under. Another two programmes are true showcases for experimentation, Project Rooms and Cutting Edge, a curator-guided tour of some of the current scene's most innovative proposals, as well as some of the breakthrough discourses emerging on the international scene. Together with these is the second edition of the programme Public Art/Open Spaces, a new concept of art conceived as a functional as well as an artistic object within urban space.


SPACES FOR EXPERIMENTATION: THE CUTTING EDGE SECTION
The very latest in today's emerging art will be on show as part of ARCO's annual CUTTING EDGE section, which will bring together more than 50 galleries from around the world. The entire section, divided into five parts united by the aim of presenting specific visions of countries and regions with special artistic significance, will feature the riskiest art at the Fair. The Far East, today a major up-and-comer on the global art scene, will be represented by Asian Party, Global Game II, whose first edition was a huge hit at ARCO'01 thanks to artists such as Tung Lu Hung, Hiroyuki Matsukage, Zhang Huan and Takehito Koganezawa. This show, to be curated once again by Hou Hanru, will feature some of the region's most important galleries, confirming the strong growth of a market vital to contemporary art, and its increasing internationalisation.

A new Cutting Edge programme will join ARCO in 2002 under the title Cityscapes: Paris-New York-Tokyo, co-curated by three specialists in each of these cities: Jérome Sans, Co-Director of the Palais de Tokyo (Paris); Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Curator-in-Chief of the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (New York), and Fumio Nanjo, a curator and art critic. Centred on three of the world's major venues for experimental art, as seen by the galleries selected to participate, the show aims to provide a new vision of today's art, which no longer possesses a territory of its own -- the work of art is stateless, a country unto itself. This space will look at how experimentation integrates hybrid references to create new identities and a new modernity, embracing the dominant 'remix' culture, as well as a new internationalism not based on differences, but rather on coincidences and similarities.

The Cutting Edge section has always prominently featured the different contexts and sensibilities of Latin America, and at ARCO'02 the region will be the subject of two exhibitions. Migrations to/from the Caribbean Sea will analyse the cultural and artistic consequences of the Caribbean's intense migrational processes, which have created a geocultural zone characterised by transculturation and hybridisation over the last five centuries. Artists' analysis of this situation, recognising their condition as emigrants, or nomads, and the different options available to those facing this new condition, will enable visitors to experience the processes of work and interaction going on in the Caribbean, Central America, and their borders. The pieces to be shown will be selected by a team comprising María Inés Rodríguez, an independent curator and member of the management team of the Biennale of Cali, Colombia; Victor Zamudio Taylor, curator of the Contemporary Art Collection of the Televisa Foundation for the Museum of Contemporary Art (MARCO), with venues in Monterrey, New York, California, and Mexico City; and Antonio Zaya, a publisher and independent curator.

The Nordic countries will constitute another focal point within the Cutting Edge Section. Between the Commercial and the Alternative is the name of a programme devoted to young Scandinavian art, curated by Paula Toppila, an art critic who is the Curator of FRAME, Finland's art exchange fund. The interest that Nordic art has recently aroused, and the attention that art from beyond their borders receives in these countries, are the catalysts of an especially enthusiastic atmosphere, which has produced an abundance of important artists. The selection to be shown at ARCO centres on galleries that consciously aspire to present new artists. On the one hand the programme will highlight art dealers from Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland, many of whom got their start in the early 1990s and now enjoy considerable prestige; on the other, offbeat galleries directed by artists' co-operatives and other not-for-profit organisations, which are playing a major role in establishing a dialogue between local and international artists, and in launching young artists. The programme at ARCO'02 will be enriched by the presence of Nordic institutions, offering information -- much of it available online -- on the wide-ranging spectrum of contemporary Scandinavian art.

PROJECT ROOMS: FRONTIERS OF INNOVATION
The PROJECT ROOMS programme is another of ARCO's international hallmarks, which over the last five years has consolidated its status as one of the Fair's most innovative initiatives. This programme has presented such outstanding artists as Shirin Neshat, Eulalia Valldosera, Carlos Garaicoa and Hiroyuki Matsukage, and has become one of the ideal venues for navigating the shifting sands of what's hot and what's not on today's art scene.

For the upcoming edition, the team of curators who have selected the projects to be presented includes: Salah Hassan, assistant professor of African art history at Cornell University's Africana Studies and Research Center, as well as a critic and curator; Rosa Martínez, a critic and independent curator, who has served as the artistic director of the 5th Istanbul Biennale, the 3rd SITE Santa Fe Biennale (1999), the EVA 2000 Biennale in Limerick (Eire), and who also promoted the 1st Katmandu Biennale and curated the show Trans Sexual Express Barcelona, 2001; and Octavio Zaya, a writer and independent curator, and co-commissioner of Documenta 11.

Frontiers is the title that gives a name and a meaning to the selection of artists and projects to be displayed at this programme. Once again, a concept linked to territoriality and geographic space is also treated metaphorically to take on the theme of other kinds of frontiers -- cultural, idiomatic, political, religious, or sexual -- as a means of expressing differences, and their transgression as an alternative to the language of globalisation. Artists' approach to confronting this situation is to defy and contest it in order to find the external limits to their cultures, and then mix them to create alternatives to the language and strategies of global capital.

PUBLIC ART
Public art represents one of ARCO's most recent causes. The ALTADIS PUBLIC ART/OPEN SPACES programme, inaugurated at ARCO'01 with projects by Carmela García, Javier Pérez and Daniel Gutierrez Adán, will present a major international selection at its next edition. Curated by Jérome Sans and Nicolas Bourriaud, Director and Co-director of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the selection will highlight the concept of daily life in the city, examining the role that art should play in the social sphere. Art conceived for a public space questions the idea of what urban furnishings should do, and examines the range of functions available to the city, providing a functional vision of art, far from a merely decorative role, or that of something to be perceived passively.

INTERNATIONAL MEETING OF ART PROFESSIONALS
ARCO, today, is the only fair on the international art circuit that serves not only as a marketing venue and cultural event, but also as a solid professional alternative. Over the last 20 years, Madrid's
International Contemporary Art Fair has become a place to meet and to exchange ideas, bringing together the different categories of professionals who intervene in the art system on an international level. ARCO has also become one of the most highly credible forums for research on the distribution and exhibition of the art object, on new forms of collecting, and the new languages of today's art.

The international success of the Fair's PANEL DISCUSSIONS programme has led the organisers of ARCO'02 to expand it to 37 panels, which will feature the participation of nearly 200 professionals and experts in the different topics to be debated. An especially interesting new theme will be the relationship of architecture to art. Other panels will deal with such topics as: New Visions of Collecting; Creating Contemporary Art Collections in Museums; New Approaches to Collecting Contemporary Photograph; Curatorial Practice Today; New Spaces for Art; New Media: Art, Culture, and Collecting on the High-Tech Frontier; Art and Art Criticism; Developments in the Presentation and Acquisition of Contemporary Art; Art and Feminism; New Selectors in International Contemporary Art; Museums on the Web; and Art Production Models.

In addition, the Panel Discussions will continue ARCO's tradition of contextualising some of the Fair's Curated Programmes, with debates on Art in Australia, Migrations to/from the Caribbean, and Public Art/Open Spaces.

net.space@arco
ARCO's new technologies area, net.space@arco, will once again present a major contingent of 'electronic enterprises', without which it would be difficult to understand the complexity of art in this new century, especially the new creative forms, and the infrastructure that makes them possible. Internet servers, contemporary art websites, distributors of electronic artwork, audio-visual rights managers, and electronic producers are, together with galleries, specialised publications, and public and private institutes, an example of these complementary infrastructure elements at ARCO, showing new projects, and websites offering online information about programmes and services.

Rounding off ARCO's programming is PROJECT SALAS, presenting an important selection of institutional and corporate collections. At ARCO'02, these will include pieces from the ABC Awards; the ACS Collection; the Artium Foundation of Alava; the Atlantic Centre for Modern Art (CAM); the Bilbao Arte Foundation; the Caja Madrid savings bank's social services foundation; the City of Madrid; the Extremaduran and Ibero-American Museum of Contemporary Art (MEIAC); the Galician Centre for Contemporary Art (CGAC); the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sports of Spain; the Museum of Contemporary Spanish Engraving; the Oscar Domínguez-Island of Tenerife Institute; the Pablo Ruiz Picasso Birthplace Museum; the Regional Governments of Cantabria, Castilla y León, Madrid, and Valencia; the Telefónica Foundation; the Vigo Museum of Contemporary Art; the Unión Fenosa Museum of Contemporary Art; and the University of Alicante Museum.

ARCO'02 will also, as usual, feature a special area as for Art and Cultural Publications, featuring trade journals, special editions, alternative publications, art bookshops, CD-ROMs, and online magazines.
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AUSTRALIA, SPECIAL GUEST COUNTRY AT ARCO'02
Australia with the rest of the world, a look at what's up in the Land Down Under

AUSTRALIA, A LOOK AT ITS ARTISTIC DIVERSITY
After the UK's stint as Special Guest Country at ARCO'01, Australia takes up the challenge of an annual programme which has, over the last eight years, aimed to review current gallery practices and examine the new discourses on the international art scene, in collaboration with prestigious curators. This time, it is the turn of the art dealer Paul Greenaway, the curator of AUSTRALIA AT ARCO'02, who will be selecting the galleries and artists to be shown in at an exhibition titled Australia with the rest of the world. It aims primarily to provide an approximation and translation of a specific image of the diversity and personality of the Australian art scene, which, although still relatively unknown internationally, has produced such renowned figures as Tracey Moffat, Juan Dávila, John Nixon, Imants Tillers, Jenny Watson, María Cruz, Mike Parr and Narelle Jubelin.

Along with the exhibition in the Australian Pavilion, a series of Panel Discussions will analyse Art in Australia Today, with the participation of artists, curators, critics, collectors, and museum directors, who will establish a dialogue revolving around today's Australian art scene. Two other major shows, to be held at different venues in Madrid, are also part of Australia's year at ARCO. Screen Life, organised by Max Delanyu at the Reina Sofía National Art Centre, will feature a virtual biennale of work from Australia, New Zealand, and Asia, and by artists with Australian ties. The Native Born, a show originally produced by Kjon Munidne for Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art, to be held in Velázquez Palace, will provide an exceptional look inside the contemporary art and culture of the Ramingining, an aborigine community in northwest Australia.

For the past six years [ojo, en otros sitios he visto 'ocho años', en cuyo caso habría que poner 'eight years'], ARCO has annually put the spotlight on a major national art scene. After the UK's stint as Special Guest Country at ARCO'01, Australia takes up the challenge, presenting its important contributions to the plastic arts. All eyes will be on the Australian Pavilion, with its exclusive selection of pieces aimed at giving visitors a closer look at the work of artists from a country which, in spite of its geographical distance from the major centres of Europe and America, has been making a splash on the international art circuit. Designed by Paul Greenaway, the commissioner of AUSTRALIA AT ARCO'02, and sponsored by the Australia Council for the Arts, this exhibition, one of the most important of its kind ever held in Madrid, will provide its Spanish and international target audience with a golden opportunity to see a more complete, comprehensive vision of art in Australia today.

Although, until now, the Australian art market's major selling point for European curators has been aboriginal art, ARCO aims to expand that vision to focus on other contemporary trends, as well -- trends undoubtedly marked by the strong ebb and flow of artists, mass consumption of new technologies, and both the country's traditional heritage and its newer Asian influences. All of these factors spring fundamentally from Australia's geographic isolation, the expansion of a global vision, and the concept of exchange that underlies the multicultural nature of Australian artists.

Australia's specific geographic and historical contexts have undoubtedly made their mark on the evolution of artistic practice in the country. Its configuration as a postcolonial state, with the shifting relationships between different immigrant groups and the indigenous population, can be extrapolated, in artistic circles, to the co-existence of contemporary art and aboriginal art. Physical distance and multicultural conditions have certainly favoured these exchanges, creating a nation of travellers, of eager consumers of technology, with an internationalist spirit conscious of the possibilities of connectivity. In such a context, art practices have developed that are derived from these experiences of exchange -- not just in the realm of art, but of ideas, and technological innovation.

Even though ARCO, over the years, has served as a major showcase for Australian galleries -- who have maintained a high profile over the last few editions -- Australia's participation as the Special Guest Country of Madrid's 21st International Contemporary Art Fair will be the perfect opportunity for European newcomers to the far-away Australian scene to learn about its artistic vitality, abundance of new artists, and democratic vision of the arts. This is a market in constant growth, defined by the evolution of a new way of working which represents the survival and regeneration of many of the cultures that it comprises within its multifaceted space.

The hallmark of AUSTRALIA AT ARCO'02 will be its diversity, which is nothing more than a faithful reflection of a global vision of Australia's art scene and gallery circuit, where commercial art dealers exist side-by-side with artists' co-operatives. Titled Australia with the rest of the world, this exhibition will put the accent on the diversity of this continent's artistic production, and the globalisation forces that are particularly evident here. These trends range from a taste for industrial materials and high-tech gloss, to a low-tech backlash celebrating imperfection -- and they will all be on display at ARCO.

AUSTRALIA AT ARCO'02 will focus on the goal of presenting a faithful, explicit portrait of the relationships between artists, galleries, collectors, public support structures in short, the Australian art world, in all its diversity. Without a doubt, the sponsorship of the Australian Council for the Arts has been, for ARCO, as important as it is for the Australian art scene itself. The Council's support for galleries, art institutes, and the artists themselves is beyond question. Its role has been fundamental in the development and international promotion of contemporary Australian art, providing consulting services, grants for Australian artists, and funding for the activities of art institutes and private dealers alike. These ambitious, state-sponsored programmes have been fundamental in launching Australian's art and its artists on the traditional art circuit, still largely based in Europe and America. Largely thanks to such efforts, many artists living in Australia today are now well known on the international scene, such as Tracey Moffat, Mike Parr, and Jenny Watson, among the many others whose work will be shown at ARCO'02.

In 2002, the Australian contingent will comprise 15 galleries, some of them already ARCO veterans, including ROSLYN OXLEY9, which has participated in the Fair every year since 2000; GREENAWAY ART GALLERY, which first came to ARCO in 1993; GABRIELLE PIZZI, back after several years of absence; and ANNA SCHWARTZ, returning for its third consecutive year. The newcomers, all prestigious dealers, are ALCASTON GALLERY, CAOS, DARREN KNIGHT, GALLERIE AUSTRALIS, GALLERY 4ª, GITTE WEISE, GODDARD DE FIDDES GALLERY, SARAH COTTIER, SUTTON, TOLARNO, and YUILL/CROWLEY.

Official Opening (by invitation): Wednesday 13th February 7 pm

Professional Visitors (by invitation):
Wednesday 13th February: 4 pm to 7 pm
Thursday 14th February: 11 am to 2 pm

Open to the General Public:
Thursday 14th February: 2 pm to 9 pm
Friday 15th, Saturday 16th, Sunday 17th, Monday 18th and Tuesday 19th: Noon to 9 pm

Dirección de Comunicación y Prensa de ARCO
Tlf: 91-722.50.94
Fax: 91-722.57.93

ARCO'02
Institucion Ferial
Parque Ferial Juan Carlos I - 28042 Madrid

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