After Vienna and Venice, the collection of the Moscow-based Stella Art Foundation comes to the National Bank’s Educational Foundation in the context of the Second Thessaloniki Biennale.
Thessaloniki is receiving works from the collection of the Stella Art Foundation in the context of the Second Thessaloniki Biennale, thereby staging another important cultural event and keeping live interest of the public to what is going on in our northern capital.
So far, Biennale has hosted exciting exhibitions raising issues relating to the form in which an institution like Biennale can work systematically, as well as the engagement of various city sites in such activities.
Subjective This time, the site hosting the collection will be the amazing building of the National Bank’s Educational Foundation (Vasilissis Olgas Str. 108), where the Subjective Visions exhibition will be held.
It will be very interesting to see works from the collection of a Foundation established in Moscow in 2004 at the initiative of Stella Kesaeva to promote cultural exchanges, popularize work of Russian artists and create a contemporary art museum in Moscow.
The Foundation’s collection — thanks, among other things, to its continuous presence in other events where works of Russian artists are exhibited — has already received a “residence permit” in the international art community. As a result, exhibitions of some pieces from the collection have already been held at the Venice Biennale and the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Thessaloniki is going to become the next stop in the collection’s journey. Biennale and the State Contemporary Art Museum have keen interest in the goings-on in the Russian art scene, and it is a right choice, given that this museum is also a “residence” of the Kostakis Collection. The National Bank’s Educational Foundation followed suit in this exciting initiative, offering Thalea Stefanidou, the exhibition’s curator, a splendid opportunity to demonstrate her exhibition arrangement method. The three areas of reflection: creative artistic process, the collecting and the curatorial activity — represent an axis around which the curator builds her approach to works, their creation, their presentation and the relationships between them. Well-renowned artists whose works are included in the Stella Art Foundation collection include authors like Alex Katz, Robert Mappelthorpe, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Joseph Kosuth and Oleg Kulik. The exhibition is held in the context of the Biennale, as well as a part of the Moscow-Thessaloniki 2009 program.
The exhibition opens on September 18.
