press to exit project space
 

June 18 - 30, 2006

Artist and curator, Agnieszka Kurant (Poland/France) during her residency in Skopje, presented her lecture dedicated on the Anna Sanders Films project focused on her collaboration with Pierre Huyghe, Philippe Parreno, Charles de Meaux and other artists. The exhibition “Double Exit” illustrated her research in limited economics and invisibility of the artworks relating the subliminal to the aspect of economy in art.

Friday, June 23, 2006, 20:00h.
“The future has already happened” lecture

Agnieszka Kurant studied film at The International Film School in Lodz, followed by an MA degree at Goldsmiths College in London. She has subsequently completed artist and curatorial residencies at Palais de Tokyo, Paris and at ISCP, New York.

Since 2003 Kurant has been working as a curator of Anna Sanders Films - a film production company established by French visual artists Pierre Huyghe, Philippe Parreno, Charles de Meaux. She has also written (together with Mathieu Copeland) a monograph of Anna Sanders Films published in 2003 by Les Presses du Reel.

She will dedicate the first part of her presentation to her collaboration with the artists from Anna Sanders and tell the story of a feeling how a group of artists can recognise themselves in one image. She will follow with the overview of her current collaborative project on Times Square, New York developed for November 2006 with Charles de Meaux, French filmmaker.

In the second part of her presentation she will focus on the ideas of subliminal messages and invisibility standing behind her artistic and curatorial practice. Discussing her past and current projects (Snow Black at Yvon Lambert, New York, Code Unknown at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Perfect Magazine collaboration with Mathieu Copeland and others) she asks how can an invisible, conceptual artwork become political? Why nothing can never be neutral? How to insert an image into the social and urban fabric and make it influence peoples lives? How to include the viewer inside the image? What are the really challenging channels of diffusion and distribution of art today outside of galleries and museums? How can a medium of exhibition become an artwork, medium or format? Why has the future already happened?

Thursday, June 29, 2006, 20:00 h.
“Double Exit” exhibition

The invisible exhibition “Double Exit”, being partly a curated show and partly an artwork, is an attempt to push the limits of a certain economy. How to make an exhibition with no money? How to use all the parameters of this economy to produce important and interesting ideas?

The exhibition consists of a black poster printed with the paint used for printing money and visible only in a special UV or infra-red light, invisible in the daytime. The print on the poster is the content of the exhibition – an assembly of various invisible artworks form artists all around the world, offers to the curator, commissioned or stolen. Each piece is invisible for a different reason: because it doesn’t exist yet, or at least, not any more, or because it’s a computer virus, a dream, a smell, or a mental image.

The exhibition will also consist of the installation on the door of the gallery becoming a double mirror “entrance” to reality. The mirroring reflection changes with time – it reflects the outside in the daytime and the inside of the gallery at night. The same ‘entrance” installation will exit simultaneously in another country in Europe in a secret place. This process of transferring an idea across space and time is of paramount importance in Kurant’s work.

The soundtrack of the show will be created by a life radio program in which Agnieszka Kurant with Yane Calovski will call several artists and creative people and talk about invisible artworks they can offer for this ever expanding show as well as their ideas for artworks to be send to the moon or elsewhere in the space. The radio program is done in partnership with Radio 103 FM in the program “Mainstream 103” hosted by Radio DJ Viktor Ruben a.k.a. Viksabrixa from 3 – 4 p.m.

Agnieszka Kurant (1978) is an artist and curator based in Paris and Warsaw. She is currently (2006-2007) an artist and curator in residence at Konstfack (participation in: Manifesta School; Centre Culturel Swiss, Paris; Iaspis, Stockholm; Istanbul; Berlin). She is also a curator-coordinator for Lukas & Sternberg publishing house, Berlin, currently working on a series of books about an exhibition as an art form. She was recently an artist/curator in residence at the ISCP in New York (2005) and previously a curator in residence at Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2004). Her exhibitions include “Snow Black” at Yvon Lambert Gallery, New York (09-11.2005); “Code Unknown” at Palais de Tokyo, Paris (02.2004); “L’exposition qui n’existe pas” at MAMCO, Geneva (06.2005-10.2006). She is a co-author of a monograph of Anna Sanders Films (Les Presses du Réel, 2003) and a curator of Anna Sanders Films Program (venues include ICA, London; Kunst Werke, Berlin). Future projects include “Day Out of Time” at Agnes b Galerie du Jour, Paris and “Third Space” – an intervention project at Times Square, NY.