eccentric paths. caminhos excentricos

09.11.2007 - 20.01.2008

Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisboa / Portugal

With the exhibition Eccentric Paths. Young Artists from Central Europe, the 'Platform Culture Central Europe' seeks to initiate a discourse with the overarching theme: 'Does art reflect the age of globalization?'

[...] The works of the 16 artists presented here direct our collective view toward the system in which we live: we all are part of a global, market and capital-oriented system of production – even just the individual locations at which we live make a difference. The fact that art is more an object of controversy than it is an object of economics is not new, for the dynamics of the global capital and financial market allow hardly any effective forms of social or political protest.... One sees, at the focus of the aesthetic strategies, a search for new patterns of thought and social norms, a search which is aimed against the jadedness of society. The themes center on issues such as identities, nationalities, the role of women within society, migration, social relations and psychological constellations. The works function independently, but at the same time do indeed refer to each other in subtle ways. Environments, as a meaningful overall models of artistic validity and expressiveness, serve the questioning of present-day life contexts and their various cultural inscriptions. The common exhibition location allows for exciting comparisons as a combined showing of the most diverse works of art, employing equally diverse techniques ranging from painting to performance, photography, video and sculpture. The employment of the most diverse materials, such as textiles, serves to augment the spectrum of traditional expressive forms.

Sàrolta Schredl
[Excerpt of the text published in the exhibition leaflet]





The 'Platform Culture Central Europe' was initiated by the Austrian Foreign Ministry in 2001 as a manifestation of the regional partnership between the countries of Austria, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia and Hungary.


[Quelle: https://web.archive.org/web/20191010092131/http://en.museuberardo.pt/exhibitions/eccentric-paths]