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26/10/2001

Casino 2001

S.M.A.K. - Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent

The Museum of Contemporary Art will present the first Quadrennial, a large-scale exhibition of up-and-coming international artists. This inaugural Quadrennial, Casino 2001, brings together a group of sixty artists and will take place in S.M.A.K. and the Bijloke Museum, both of which are situated around Citadel Park.

A Quadrennial in Ghent

Today, the Biennial, as well as other major temporary exhibitions across the world, are gaining in importance and have an audience of their own. S.M.A.K. intends to participate in such notions of the international exhibition, and broaden it. The Quadrennial will be a sort of turntable, an event that will ensure that the museum continually questions its own function. It will become a structural mechanism that creates certain openings in the ordinary, everyday operations of the museum. Each Quadrennial will examine a new and ever thriving contemporary art scene throughout the world. As early as the opening of S.M.A.K. in 1999, the idea of creating a new pattern of exhibitions independent of traditional methods had arisen; each exhibition will continue to take a new direction.

This forum provides a venue for artists whose work participates in a meaningful dialogue on contemporary art. It will expose a multiplicity of artists and projects, and provide the possibility of making connections by revealing similarities and differences at various levels. The Quadrennial will therefore represent a challenge for the museum in that it will be forced to start afresh every four years. Each edition will be headed by one curator who will be appointed for every Quadrennial; he or she will be responsible for creating a concept for the content, and for the selection of artists. The choice of curator will be based on their view of contemporary art, which need not necessarily reflect the options supported by the museum, but which may nevertheless be all the more interesting just because of it.

S.M.A.K. has therefore deliberately opted to launch an exhibition that will break through the ‘traditional pattern of exhibitions’, which is usually a program consisting of temporary exhibitions in the museum alongside the presentation of the permanent collection. In this way, the Quadrennial becomes a complementary organisation alongside the museum. From an international viewpoint, Biennials and other emerging exhibitions are gaining in importance and are even considered equal to permanent museums with their own fixed collections.

Artistic director

Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, an independent curator and art advisor from New York, has been appointed as the artistic director for this premier Quadrennial. In 1997 she completed an installation of masterpieces of American art entitled American Artists in Paris for the American Ambassador’s Residence in Paris, France. In Limerick ,Ireland, Ms. Greenberg Rohatyn juried the EV+A’99 exhibition. Over the past few years, Ms. Greenberg has produced several exhibitions on contemporary photography in New York, including Another Girl/Another Planet, 1999 and Party Pictures: From Studio 54 to Cannes, 2000. She has installed art in such alternative venues as the Tower Air Terminal at Kennedy International Airport as well as curated WallWorks, site specific wall installations for Edition Schellmann. This will be her first large-scale international exhibition.

CASINO 2001

The title of the exhibition plays upon an earlier incarnation of S.M.A.K. In the past, the museum functioned as a gambling casino. The shadow of this lineage has left its trace upon the artist chosen for this exhibition. CASINO 2001 relies upon the symbolism and mythology of American popular culture, exemplified by the gambling casino. Extravagant and theatrical, fortune - making and breaking, the casino functions as the paradigmatic site of the spectacular. As with all spectacles, the glittering surface reality has a darker underbelly - addictive, seedy, corrupt and violent. The casino also bundles together themed environments of living spaces, shopping, live acts and culture. The artists chosen for this exhibition simultaneously thrive within such arenas and approach them with a subversive eye.

The entertainment culture has radically changed the face of art. These artists have absorbed its latest media forms, including film, digital video, photography, special effects, branding and marketing and computer animation. Thus, much of the work presented here is connected to the camera and often presented in video or film format. For example cantilevered from the wall on a tiny screen will be the famed 1963 defeat of Sonny Liston by Cassius Clay, who following the fight proclaimed himself as Muhammad Ali, the king of the world. Here, however, New York based artist Paul Pfeiffer, has digitally erased the fighters in The Long Count (I Shook Up the World). Ghosts in al liquid gel, their presence pulses back and forth across the ring.

Most of the artists in this exhibition came of age in the 1970’s, in the age of the practised "ism". The cold aesthetic of Pop has been absorbed back into popular culture. Their generation is one of conceptualism, consumerism, entertainment (via movies and TV) and technology. Many of these artists will name a film, a video game or a media image as their first aesthetic influence. The separation between the artist and the celebrity, or the private and the public, has been dismantled. New York based artist Keith Edmier, for example, has collaborated with TV’s most glamorous 70’s star, Farrah Fawcett, for his work in this exhibition. Here, the former Charlie’s Angel, brings her glossy, star-spangled aura to the museum. L.A. based artist Mike Bouchet spent three years in his studio making dry-wall (from his secret recipe), at the end of his lease he hired a commercial fashion photographer to document this work. His studio turned Hollywood set, will be reinstalled at S.M.A.K., but here as wallpaper.

Locations CASINO 2001 will take up the ground floor of S.M.A.K. and the Bijloke Museum. This will create a dialogue between two architecturally different institutions: the modern ‘white cube’ versus the historical municipal museum.

S.M.A.K. was renovated in 1999, and is the first museum in Belgium dedicated to contemporary art. The idea of the white cube is emphasised by the natural light that enters the building through the glass roof and various passages. Here the American artists Ricci Albenda will redefine the role of the museum gallery by making the pure white walls twist and turn and adding his own portals and pedestals.

The Bijloke Museum will be transformed into a sort of ‘Waxworks Museum’ for the occasion. The building in which this museum is housed was originally a Cistercian nunnery founded in the 13th century. This nunnery, better known as the Bijloke Abbey, and whose buildings date largely from the 14th century, included a hospital. The museum is home to a number of specific artefacts such as statues, paintings, tapestries, period interiors, objects and decorative elements which are all connected to the history of Ghent.
During CASINO 2001 contemporary objects and works will replace these museum works. The Bijloke will become the site of an experiment in which the former abbey is transformed into a funhouse, a sort of waxworks museum, where there is a distortion of reality, where artists give free rein to their imagination and where the visitor experiences a feeling of disorientation. The American painter Kurt Kauper will replace the 18th-century portraits in the guildhall of the museum with his own contemporary portraits.

Participant artists

Franz Ackermann Germany, Haluk Akakçe Turkey, Ricci Albenda United States, Darren Almond England, Emmanuelle Antille Switzerland, Mike Bouchet United States, Andrea Bowers United States, Slater Bradley United States, Juan Céspedes Chile, Patty Chang United States, Minerva Cuevas Mexico, Jason Dodge United States, Keith Edmier & Farrah Fawcett United States, Ben Edwards United States, Jeroen Eisinga Netherlands, Inka Essenhigh United States, Angus Fairhurst England, Tom Friedman United States, Gajin Fujita United States, Kendell Geers South Africa, Katy Grannan United States, Katharina Grosse Germany, Nic Hess Switzerland, Michelle Hines United States, Noritoshi Hirakawa & Didier Théron Japan, Jonathan Horowitz United States, Cameron Jamie United States, Ann Veronica Janssens Belgium, Mika Kato Japan, Kurt Kauper United States, Andree Korpys & Markus Löffler Germany, Michael Lin Taiwan, Michel Majerus Germany, Margherita Manzelli Italy, Malerie Marder United States, Maria Marshall England, Julie Mehretu United States, Lucas Michael Argentina/United States, Sarah Morris United States, Victoria Morton Scotland, David Musgrave England, Mie Nagai Japan, Csaba Nemes & Ágnes Szépfalvi Hungary, Olaf Nicolai Germany, Tim Noble & Sue Webster England, Richard Patterson England, Alix Pearlstein United States, Paul Pfeiffer United States, Jeroen de Rijke & Willem de Rooij Netherlands, Hannelore Reuen Germany, Gert Robijns Belgium, Peter Rostovsky Russia/United States, Aïda Ruilova United States, Ricky Swallow Australia, Patrick Tuttofuoco Italy, Piotr Uklanski Poland, Minnette Vári South Africa, Gary Webb England, Saskia Olde Wölbers Netherlands, Sislej Xhafa Kosovo.

Image: Aida Ruilova, This Is Great, 2001; video still Courtesy of Artemis Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, New York

Practical information for CASINO 2001

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn - Address: 730 5th Avenue, 9th floor, New York, NY 10019, USA

LOCATION
S.M.A.K., Citadelpark, 9000 Gent and Bijlokemuseum, Godshuizenlaan 2, 9000 Gent

DATES
27th October 2001 - 13th January 2002

OPENING
Saturday 27th October 2001

OPENING HOURS
10 am - 6 p.m. daily, closed on Mondays

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