Moscow-Thessaloniki 2009

[Project] [Exhibitions]
Our first acquaintance with the Stella Art Foundation was through its Director, Alexander Rytov, in one of Christos Savvidis’s trips to Madrid in 2006. Soon after that, we met the founder Stella Kesaeva and most of their collaborators. We have had the chance to work with them on various projects, large scale (such as the international art fair of Athens - Art Athina 2007), or modest ones (such as the presentation of Russian artists at the annual visual arts festival Action Field 2007 and 2008). Every time it's been a special and pleasant experience. Stella Kesaeva’s passion and sincere interest are an inspiration for all her collaborators who are equally eager. It is this passion, that we share, that has brought us closer and has forged our collaboration.

Thanks to this passion for art and collaborations through art, even our common projects that started off as modest ones, gradually progressed into large scale, international events. This has happened in the case of “Making Words” that started off as an opening night poetry performance in the space of a visual art exhibition in Thessaloniki (Action Field Kodra 2008) and gradually progressed into a large scale project, with the participation of poets and visual artists from around the world, first presented at the 53rd international art exhibition of the Venice Biennale “Making Worlds”, directed by Daniel Birnbaum. This project is now part of the events “Moscow-Thessaloniki 2009” and is already receiving invitations from established institutions to be presented elsewhere.

While planning the project, we followed the impressive course of Stella Art Foundation’s presentations in Vienna –superbly curated by Boris Manner– and Venice, where the collection was presented in the frame of the 53rd Venice Biennale, an exhibition of great importance. These previous events have been a huge challenge for us, called to measure up to their high quality.

The series of events designed especially for Thessaloniki achieve this goal one hundred per cent. The central exhibition “Subjective visions”, curated by Thalea Stefanidou, assisted by Lydia Chatziiakovou and Anastasia Dokuchaeva, pays true tribute to the collection itself, treating it in a novel way: as a process / instrument for the emancipation and identification of the self. Focusing on the three fields of activity and reflection central to the life of a collection and its public presentation –creating, collecting, curating– the exhibition presents works by established and emerging artists from Russia and the West, emphasizing on the power of the self (be it an artist, collector, curator or spectator) to select, accumulate, rearrange, restructure and finally form its own, personal and unique Weltanschauung.

Towards the same direction, the individual projects by artists Alexander Djikia and Haim Sokol offer different ways of personal implication with the past.

Altogether, “Moscow-Thessaloniki 2009” offers an excellent opportunity for the people of Thessaloniki and art lovers from around Greece visiting the 2nd Thessaloniki Biennale to get acquainted with works we seldom get the chance to see, usually presented in large scale events, such as Documenta in Kassel or the Venice Biennale.

We have been planning the project “Moscow-Thessaloniki” since 2008. Throughout this process, we approached various institutions and possible partners. 
A meeting with Georgi Muradov, head of the Department of Foreign Trade and International Relations of the Moscow Government –a genuine philhellenist, eager to support cultural exchanges between Russia and Greece– has been very important towards the realization of the project. 
Equally significant, Marina Rytova’s promise to offer her help. One of Russia’s most esteemed figures in the field of Greek studies, Marina Rytova unfortunately left us before having the chance to support the project through her huge experience, knowledge, strength and charming personality. We would like to dedicate this project to her. 
Of course, this project would have not been realized without the support of our partner institutions: the State Museum of Contemporary Art of Thessaloniki and the Thessaloniki Biennale, especially the Director Maria Tsantsanoglou and her close collaborators as well as the museum’s technical staff; the National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation, Director Dionysios Kapsalis and Director of the foundation’s Thessaloniki Centre, Giorgos Kordomenidis and his collaborators; of course the Stella Art Foundation team, its Director Alexander Rytov and Stella Kesaeva herself who has been closely involved in all the stages of planning and realizing the project.
Above all, I would like to thank the curators and all participating artists, eternally present through their work.  

Christos Savvidis
Co-director of the project "Moscow-Thessaloniki 2009"

Moscow-Thessaloniki 2009
 Thessaloniki, Greece
19 September - 1 November 2009

Organised by:
Stella Art Foundation (Moscow) ArtBOX (Thessaloniki)

in collaboration with:
Moscow City Government
2nd Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art
State Museum of Contemporary Art (Thessaloniki, Greece)
National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation / Thessaloniki Center
Thessaloniki Port Authority SA

Project Directors:
Alexander Rytov (SAF)
Christos Savvidis (ArtBOX.gr)

General Coordination:
Lydia Chatziiakovou (ArtBOX.gr)

Assistant:
Tatiana Rytova (SAF)

Within the parallel program of the 2nd Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporray Art

The project is dedicated to the memory of Marina Rytova

Picture
Christos Savvidis and Georgi Muradov, Moscow 2008
Picture
Marina Rytova and Christos Savvidis, Moscow 2008

Subjective Visions 
Works from the Stella Art Foundation Collection

Stella Art Foundation is a non-for profit organization founded in November 2004 after an initiative of collector Stella Kesaeva. Within the main goals of the foundation is the promotion of cultural exchange and of Russian, mainly, artists, as well as the founding of a museum of contemporary art in Moscow. The foundation has a strong presence in all established international art evens of contemporary art (Documenta, Venice Biennale) and collaborates with important exhibition venues and museums (Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna, Ca’ Rezzonico in Venice). In Thessaloniki, the foundation presents works from its Collection as part of the parallel program of the 2nd Biennale of Contemporary Art, in collaboration with ArtBOX.gr | creative arts management.

The Works are presented in an exhibition curated by art historian and curator Thalea Stefanidou. The curator of the exhibition notes: “A collection accumulates digits of creative time, creating documentations of the past for the future, while curating plays with the poetic quality of both the ephemeral and the accidental, and thus brings the collection to life in the present, provoking the spectator-accomplice. (…) So I ended up with three fields of activity and reflection: creating, collecting and curating, treated as three equally re-directed processes that permeate each other in order to depict renewed memory corrugations, so that the collection becomes the occasion to create biographèmes, of the artist, the collector, the curator. This is a way to construct identities, or even better, one identity of plural self. (…) How is an art work structured? How is a collection ‘built’? How is the content of a collection restructured in relation to new spaces of its reception and the curatorial task? All these are questions that in order to be answered lead to the three-sectioned, organizational mechanism, which is based on a self that decides and that creates an organic system, a whole, a whole that is different every time.”
"The curator of the exhibition selected very good works from the collection and she installed them masterfully." Nikos Xidakis, newspaper "Kathimerini", 25/10/2009

"The curatorial work is sterling, both regarding the selection of the works and the exhibition installation." Maria Marangou, newspaper "Eleftherotypia", 5/10/2009

Subjective Visions
 National Bank of Greece Cultural Foundation / Thessaloniki Centre (MIET), Thessaloniki, Greece
19 September - 1 November 2009

Organised by:
Stella Art Foundation (Moscow)
ArtBOX | Creative Arts Management (Greece)

Curator:
Thalea Stefanidou

Assistant curators:
Lydia Chatziiakovou (ArtBOX.gr)
Anastasia Dokuchaeva (SAF)

Coordination:
Lydia Chatziiakovou (ArtBOX.gr)

Assistant:
Tatiana Rytova (SAF)

Architect:
Giannis Epaminondas (ArtBOX)

Artists:
Yuri Albert, Nikita Alexeev, Yuri Avvakumov, Vagrich Bakhchanyan, Alexey Buldakov, Olga Chernysheva, Michael Craig-Martin, Eugenia Emets, Elena Elagina & Igor Makarevich, Alexandra Galkina, Alexander Gnilitsky, Dmitry Gutov, Ilya & Emilia Kabakov, Alex Katz, Maria Konstantinova, Joseph Kosuth, Oleg Kulik, Robert Mapplethorpe, Andrey Monastyrsky, Ilya Trushevsky, Stas Polnarev, Dmitry Tsvetkov, Spencer Tunick

Haim Sokol
"To All Who Ever Lived Here"
[Public art work donated to the city of Thessaloniki by Stella Art Foundation]

There are only a few cities on earth in which the fourth dimension, that of time, is felt particularly strongly. Thessaloniki is, undoubtedly, one of such cities. That is why one involuntarily feels here an incredible urge to create something in time rather than in space. Somebody once described a work of art as "a SOS signal sent to the future". But we already live in the future – an incredible, distant future, one which we couldn't dream of even fifty or a hundred years ago. Therefore, I turn my work back to the past. I am writing to all those who once lived here. And I am waiting for their answer.

Haim Sokol 
Artist

From one who lives here now

I live in thessaloniki and I am haunted by the city's past. Ghosts are on the lurk at every step and they beg for satisfaction, maybe atonement –not for revenge, I think, as every people here has payed enough blood in its passing through the city. Let's do it, after all! It is easy to appear noble and generous, even though with hindsight: indeed, there is nothing anymore that could threaten the things we gained…
It is by circumstance that I was the one to implement the work of haim sokol, a russian jew artist, in the city. And such a gesture required a truce with yesterday and a kind of introspection for tomorrow. In a city where everybody is keen on self-determination, you need to know those who existed and are already gone, in order to be able, after all, to determine yourself also through others.

I know the jews who were left to be exterminated by the Nazis: I don't ignore the reasons why greeks covertly approved it, as a convenient way to take up commerce and properties / I don't ignore the international jewish movement that designated the city as a capital of its future state / I don't ignore the panic sown by those plans among greeks who had just retaken the city into their hands after five hundred years...

I know the turks who were exchanged for the respective numbers of christians from the other shore of the aegean sea: I don't ignore the price paid by the defeated maximalist of the big idea / I don't ignore the grief of greeks for the loss of their primordial cradles / I don't ignore the terrible injustice felt by the native turks of greece when they were uprooted from their hearths –those winners of war– for the sake of some imaginary future peace…

I know the bulgarians who had but leave thessaloniki in the storm of successive wars they lost: I don't ignore the rivalry for the possession of the city, the suffering inflicted on both sides every time the region changed its ruler / I don't ignore the visions of exit to the white sea, the revival of the old kingdom, the called off of great bulgaria treaty / I don't ignore the deep suspicion harboured by greeks against them to this day...

I know the armenians who perished through their own catastrophe in the east: I don't ignore the cosmopolitan merchants who were carried away through an easy exodus –it tends to happen to the wealthy bourgeoisie when things get really tough / I don't ignore the refugees who believed in repatriation and emigrated again to soviet armenia / I don't ignore the greek refugees who lived with a similar dream of a return…

I know the greeks who built the city and were driven out of it when it was captured by the ottomans: I don't ignore that the city was desolated and was then repopulated by jews, turks and greeks / I don't ignore greeks' ambitions to make the city their own, although they consisted just a minority in the population on the eve of the balkan wars / I don't ignore the manipulations designed to give the city a greek face again by erasing the disturbing pasts of “the others"…

I don't ignore, and it burdens my soul. Yet, I know, and this knowledge liberates me.

After many palinodies and delays, the minimal, naked concrete column with a rusty mailbox on top, was raised in front of the old customs house of the port, a building by jewish engineer eli modiano, neighboring port depots from the times of the great war and the english-french presence; the holocaust monument in the square where jews were gathered for the first time by the nazis in July 42; on the francs’ street, the building of the former ottoman bank rebuilt after being blown up by bulgarians of the comitat at the peak of the underground struggle for controlling the city; further on, the armenian neighborhood and, at the sea shore, the white tower –an ottoman structure, in defiance of the hot-blooded who vandalized the respective inscription; off the historical center, the mosque of the followers of sabatai sevi who converted to islam; finally, the villas of the bourgeois from two centuries ago, mostly jews, ottomans and westerners; and all around, their industries, mills, brick factories, markets, cemeteries, churches, synagogues and mosques: either eradicated, just like the people who built and supported them, or precarious, just like their shaky memory that some certain ones are strongly blowing at, trying to erase it, too.

Still, some others don’t want to forget. They know, although they don't ignore: this, haim, is my answer in behalf of all those whom you were writing to; because I am them...

Giannis Epaminondas
Architect

P.S. certain orthography was applied, avoiding the “patriotic” use of capital letters on names and places, as a gesture of respect towards those who suffered of the national and community rivalries.

To All Who Ever Lived Here
 Port of Thessaloniki, Greece
19 September 2009

Artist:
Haim Sokol

Architect:
Giannis Epaminondas (ArtBOX.gr)

Coordination:
Lydia Chatziiakovou (ArtBOX.gr)

Produced by:
Stella Art Foundation

Alexander Djikia
Variations on the theme of Cretan-Mycenaean seals 
[drawings exhibition]

In 2001-2002, well-known Muscovite artist Alexander Djikia produced two large series of graphics on the themes of ancient Greek vase painting and Cretan-Mycenaean seals. This period became a real turning point in his creative biography. An artist who never used models for his drawings and only concentrated on images from his inner world, removed his own self from his drawings, overcame the boundaries of his ego (both in literal and figurative meaning of the word) and began exploring images as seen by other artists. This moment in his life coincided with an opportunity to access a university library with a good collection of books and catalogues on ancient Greek art. Alexander Djikia became completely immersed in the world of archaic drawings, and, by studying reproductions of images created in time immemorial, he eventually began to see the images that inspired the ancient artists to paint on vases or cut seals. For Alexander Djikia this time was a sort of a meditative period, as his study involved an expansion of the mind and grasping of the world beyond the usual field of vision. "Old" Alexander Djikia would put before him a clean sheet of paper, look at it and draw things emerging from his mind. "New" Alexander Djikia would closely look at the images on seals and vases and try to see images that appeared before the eyes of artists millenia ago. Seeing those images helped him reconstruct in his work forms and lines erased by the inexorable march of time, transpose the drawings from the round surface of vases to the plane of the paper sheet, magnify tiny images of the seals to a size that could be easily perceived without a magnifying glass. It would probably be appropriate to draw an analogy with the creative effort of a composer and a performer: a composer leaves note signs as symbols of the music he hears within himself; a performer reads and reproduces them, with his manner remaining quite individual and original. Alexander Djikia's works on the theme of ancient Greek drawings are interpretations that are not only finely performed, but also "deciphered" in his unique characteristic manner.
Djikia's series of drawings on the theme of Cretan-Mycenaean seals is especially interesting. He once said jokingly that the longsightedness he developed by his forties helped him to properly see the true beauty of these tiny pictures. Indeed, although many hundreds of such seals have been found, museums visitors don't pay special attention to the seals themselves or the images on them, as they are so extremely small. Surprisingly, this huge stratum of visual art, unlike the ancient Greek vase painting, remains virtually unnoticed to this day – not only by the general public, but even by art historians. Paradoxically, it is the images on these seals that tell us about the cosmogony of the Cretan-Mycenaean civilization in the widest and fullest way and present a broad range of pictorial styles and story lines. A great number of seals has survived perfectly well and brought to us images that didn't survive in form of frescos, pottery, sculpture or metallic reliefs. The unbelievable plastic, mostly dictated by the miniature format of the image, could often be compared to the best examples of classical avant-garde and the 20th century art. The laconism of form is combined in a remarkable manner with excellent knowledge of anatomy, laws of composition and depiction of various aspects and movement.
Alexander Djikia's drawings on the themes of the Cretan-Mycenaean seals are maybe the only example of penetration of this material into the contemporary figurative culture. Djikia, much like his colleagues from the remote past, knows how to draw, and therefore his replicas of the archaic images bring us the spirit of that time and allow us to make new sense of that spirit, its admiration for life and its acceptance of life without analysis and reflection, in all its completeness, as it is. The energy of Djikia's lines resonates with the optimistic and healthy side of a viewer's nature, bringing about real joy of perception.
The series of works on the theme of Cretan-Mycenaean seal was created in a space of two years, in 2001-2002, and comprises about 200 А3 sheets with drawings in Indian ink and crayons. Each sheet is accompanied with a short title, as well as information on the source of the seal, whose image was used as a prototype for the drawing. This work gained a positive comment from Professor Ingo Pini, a long-time editor of Corpus Der Minoischen Und Micaenischen Siegel, the fullest available catalogue of Cretan-Mycenaean seals.

Olga Tshisil
Art historian

Variations on the theme of
Cretan-Mycenaean seals
 Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki, Greece
19 September - 1 November 2009

Artist:
Alexander Djikia

Coordination:
Lydia Chatziiakovou

Igor Makarevich & Elena Elagina
"Making Words", "Common Cause II", "Common Cause III"

The project "Making Words - Moscow Poetry Club" and the work "Common Cause III" by Igor Makarevich & Elena Elagina were part of the "Moscow - Thessaloniki 2009" project. The first presentation was in the Venice Biennale. For details: