ARTEAST 2000+ A selection of works from Moderna galerija's international and national collections

Raša Todosijević, Special thanks to Raša Todosijević - the grateful citizens of Ljubljana, 2000
Photo: Lado Mlekuz & Matija Pavlovec

19 December 2008 - 22 February 2009
Umetnostna galerija Maribor / Maribor Art Gallery / Strossmayerjeva 6 / Maribor

Artists:
Marina Abramović, Joseph Beuys, Braco Dimitrijević, Jenny Holzer, Cristina Iglesias, Irwin, Sanja Iveković, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Katarzyna Kozyra, Laibach, Kazimir Malevich, Walter de Maria, OHO, Alenka Pirman, Mladen Stilinović, Nebojša Šerić - Šoba, Raša Todosijević
Curators: Zdenka Badovinac and Bojana Piškur

The project is part of the ongoing action "Hosting Moderna galerija!"

Moderna galerija was the first institution in Europe to start systematically collecting works by Eastern European artists and rewriting the history of postwar art. The international collection Arteast 2000+ began to take shape in the 1990s under the curatorship of Moderna galerija director Zdenka Badovinac and advisors Viktor Misiano, Piotr Piotrowski, Harald Szeemann, and Igor Zabel. Before starting this collection, Moderna galerija had systematically collected only works by Slovenian artists, modern and contemporary. The new social and political circumstances created a pressing need for a collection of works by international artists as well, and for the work of the institution to generally become more internationally oriented.

Fundamentally, the collection Arteast 2000+ is based on works by Eastern European neo-avant-garde artists, but it also includes a number of works by prominent Western artists which were acquired in the 1990s, while Moderna galerija was intensely forging international links; some of them were purchased at the beginning of this decade, simultaneously with the majority of the other works. The purpose of the collection Arteast 2000+ is to create a dialogue between Eastern and other spaces; its first public presentation in 2000 was thus entitled "The Art of Eastern Europe in Dialogue with the West."

The collection was inaugurated in 2000 in an unrenovated, ex-army-barracks building in Metelkova Street which Moderna galerija had just been allotted. The event coincided with the Ljubljana edition of Manifesta that year and enthused both the local and international public. Since then the collection has traveled extensively in a variety of selections, while individual works from it are often included in international exhibitions worldwide.

Currently, Moderna galerija is reorganizing its work into two sections: a museum of modern art and a museum of contemporary art. The latter will be housed in the building at Metelkova Street 22, which is to be renovated in 2010; the Arteast 2000+ collection will be permanently displayed there. Since the conception of this collection, Moderna galerija has started a series of so-called Arteast Exhibitions, which focus, just like the collection, on the various processes of redefining history (Form-Specific, 2003; 7 Sins: Ljubljana - Moscow, 1995; Interrupted Histories, 2006; Arteast 2000+23, 2006; Schengen Women, 2008).

The Umetnostna galerija Maribor / Maribor Art Gallery will display a selection of the larger installations by some of the most globally distinguished and preeminent artists.

→  Hosting MG! Archive