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9/3/2009

Artists in Residence 2009

Galerie ArtPoint, Wien

KulturKontakt Austria invites you to the first exhibition of the Artists in Residence 2009:
Sebastijan Dračić/Croatia, Lena Soulkovskaia/Belarus and Fani Zguro/Albania

At this first presentation by our Artists in Residence 2009, three young artists exhibit their works in Galerie ArtPoint: Sebastijan Dračić from Croatia, Lena Soulkovskaia from Belarus and Fani Zguro from Albania are our guests here in Vienna from January to March 2009.

A project of: KulturKontakt Austria

The Albanian artist Fani Zguro works on the borderline between painting, drawing, photography, collage and video. His great fascination is the cinema. In his video works, Zguro relates to both international and Albanian film productions from the 1950s to the 1970s, particularly to the aesthetics of film noir.
His works are created from found footage – from family photographs, black and white films or books which he utilises.

In the exhibition, Fani Zguro presents two new videos, one photography-based work and two paintings into which he integrates childhood memories.
The two video installations 09 and Passengers refer to films about the second world war which he watched with great enthusiasm as a child in Albania. In the video Passengers, he uses one of the initial scenes from the Albanian film noir Nusja dhe Shtetrrethimi. It is a scene set during the second world war which he transforms into a 20-second long loop. This video work is at the same time a tribute to Jean-Pierre Melville’s film Army of Shadows.
The black and white photograph Untitled, which is presented in an installation along with the video Passengers, shows a still from the film Ansiktet by the director Ingmar Bergman. In this work, the artist uses a portrait of the well-known actor Max von Sydow as a starting point, which he then paints over with black ink. The subtitle “...oh yes l’ve seen them…l know what l know” appears below.

In her autobiographical works, Lena Soulkovskaia combines painting with textiles in large-format collages which she then extends to form installations. The artist from Belarus uses her observations and reflections about her environment in her works as well as dreams and day-dreams, and weaves real and fictitious stories into them. Her paintings have less of a symbolic character; they are rather abstract images and leave a lot of space for the viewer’s own interpretation. In her collages she combines printed and painted sections, paper and textiles. When using textiles, Soulkovskaia relates to the traditional patchwork quilts in her home city of Minsk and uses similar materials in order to incorporate themes such as destiny and desire or dealing with dreams and memories.

During her stay in Vienna, Lena Soulkovskaia created pictures and collages whose themes she obtained from texts and stories she wrote herself. One of the paintings shows silhouette-like figures: it depicts a scene at a party in Moscow. In the collage Conversations, Soulkovskaia is less interested in the contents of a conversation than in different atmospheres and the feeling of time during a conversation, which she tries to capture.

The Croatian artist Sebastijan Dračić gets the inspiration for his paintings particularly from the films of David Lynch, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Andrei Tarkowski or Stanley Kubrick. He obtains his ideas from books, comics, television series or photographs.

Dračić’s series of works entitled Interiors relates to architecture and time. By mixing different architectural styles and playing with perspectives and simultaneously distorting them, the artist creates timeless spaces. These places, which are usually deserted, radiate a mystical atmosphere. In his paintings he transforms the familiar into something mysterious and almost frightening.
In his series 8 x 8, Dračić created eight pictures with titles which are linked to historical personalities and their histories: Love life of Napoleon, Social life of Maria Theresa or Old age of Suleiman the Great. The scenes are reduced, appear surreal and full of symbolism: a large empty drawing room with a blue carpet, a dog on a cold tiled floor or a large red room with a single chair. The artist confuses the viewer by deliberately choosing titles which at first glace cannot be associated with the scene, playing with meanings and the knowledge of the observer.
In his work for the exhibition, Sebastijan Dračić developed two pictures with the title Vienna, a diptych referring to his stay in the city and the experiences and associations which he connects with it.

THE ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE PROGRAMME

For 2009, KulturKontakt Austria invited 14 young artists to be Artists in Residence. In four exhibitions in Galerie ArtPoint they will present the works which they created during their three-month stay in Vienna. The Artists in Residence programme is directed towards artists from Eastern and South Eastern Europe, and has been offered by KulturKontakt Austria since 1992. Since the initiation of the programme, more than 4,500 artists have applied and around 200 of them have been selected to take part in the programme. With its Artists in Residence programme, KulturKontakt Austria enables artists to make contact and exchange experiences with the Austrian and international art scenes.

Further dates of the exhibitions of the Artists in Residence 2009:

2nd Exhibition of the Artists in Residence:
Opening: 09. 06. 2009, duration of the exhibition: 10. 06. – 31. 07. 2009
Ana Kadoić/Croatia, Yuriy Kruchak / Yulia Kostereva/Ukraine, Sinisa Ilić/Serbia

3rd Exhibition of the Artists in Residence:
Opening: 08. 09. 2009, duration of the exhibition: 09. 09. – 02. 10. 2009
Aleksandra Petrusevska/Macedonia, Irena Lagato/Montenegro, Ivan Bazak/Ukraine

4th Exhibition of the Artists in Residence:
Opening: 03. 12. 2009, duration of the exhibition: 04. 12. - as yet undecided
Irina Gheorghe / Alina Popa/Romania, Lana Hujnić/ Bosnia-Herzegovina, Vlad Nancă/ Romania

KulturKontakt Austria
Universitätsstraße 5 - 1010 Wien/Vienna
t +43 1 5238765-0 f +43 1 5238765-20 office@kulturkontakt.or.at

Press contact
Mag. Ursula Hilmar t +43 1 5238765-14 E. ursula.hilmar@kulturkontakt.or.at

Image: Fani Zguro, Passengers/Nusja dhe Shtetrrethimi, Still aus Video, 2009

Private preview: Tuesday 10. 03. 2009, 19.00

Galerie ArtPoint
Universitätsstraße 5, 1010 Vienna
Mo–Fr 14.00 – 18.00

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