Beke László (szerk.): Instruktiv + Inter + Konkret. Művészet Malom Szentendre, 21. November - 26. Januar 2015 (Sankt Augustin, 2014)
1. Vorwort WOW
Foreword The Society for the Promotion East-West of Knowledge Transfer (“WOW") has made promoting the collaboration between science and economy, strengthening innovation, as well as supporting the cultural cooperation between Eastern and Western Europe its task. WOW is a platform, a point of reference for contacts, exchanges and network formations nationally and internationally. We support companies and scientific institutions in realising their projects with a geographical focus on Central and Eastern Europe and CIS. Innovation in art and innovation in a company are closely related; the creation of networks between artists in Europe is therefore also part of our projects. In the context of this project, together with artists from seven European countries, we are planning the implementation of a series of events consisting of exhibitions and symposiums. The first station of the project is Hungary, at the MűvészetMalom (art mill) in Szentendre. The exhibition “CONSTRUCTIVE + INTER + CONCRETE - 16 international artists - 16 positions“ will take place there from 21 October 2014 to 26 January 2015. The opening of the exhibition, accompanied by a symposium, will present artists, their art forms and works. This exhibition is presenting artisticscientific position-sculptures and groups of works with discernible similarities as well as pronounced individual approaches that differ greatly. They are symbolic of the developments in concrete and constructive art forms of the 21st century. The group of artists will also be presenting their works in other European countries over the next years. The artists involved in this project have been working together for years and each of them has a good network at their disposal. With their activities, the establishment of an internationally-oriented artists’ network for their contemporary art forms, as well as the creation of partnerships for long-term cooperation projects is to be supported under the motto: art and culture effect processes of change, but are themselves changed as a result. The project is to promote the cultural external representation of European countries and, in a politically and economically unified Europe, support the preservation of cultural diversity which is particularly threatened in the context of europeanisation and globalisation. The initiator of this series of projects is the German artist/curator and executive director of WOW, Heinz Kasper. We are very happy that the first stop of the exhibition series will be here in Hungary in the artists’ town of Szentendre. We would like to thank the former mayor of Szentendre, Dr. Ferenc Dietz, and the director of the MűvészetMalom museum Dr. Márton Kálnoki-Gyöngyössy, who made this exhibition in Szentendre possible. Furthermore, we would like to thank Dr. Basics Beatrix, Deputy Director of the MűvészetMalom museum, as well as Prof. Dr. László Веке, Hungarian art historian and curator of the exhibition. We would also like to thank Zsuzsa Dárdái, art critic, for her organisational support. Further thanks go out to Dr. Erda Lapp, Dorothea Schwalbach, Angela Toscani, Dr. Gyöngyi Amman and Bejamin Schmidt for their editorial support and layout work. We would also like to express our gratitude to everyone, and Marco Kasper in particular, who assisted the creation of this work knowingly or unknowingly in one way or another. 9
