Interview with curator III Moscow International Biennale of Contemporary Art, Jean-Hubert Martin
ARTinvestment.RU   27 мая 2008

The renowned French art critic, museum curator, and Jean-Hubert Martin, visited Moscow in a new capacity - Curator III Moscow International Biennale of Contemporary Art, which will be held in 2009

famous French art historian, museum curator, and Jean-Hubert Martin, former director of the Center Pompidou in Paris, Dusseldorf and the Kunst Palast Museum in Paris arts of Africa and Oceania, visited Moscow in a new capacity - Curator III Moscow International Biennale of Contemporary Art, which held in 2009.

- you've already seen the exhibition area III of Moscow Biennale - a garage, built by the famous Konstantin Melnikov constructivists?

- Yes. Awesome place. Well has it that this is a great space and one in which you can collect all the Biennale. I do not like when you have split into several exhibition areas. It is inconvenient to offer the audience that they ran in three or four different places.

- the building itself, perhaps, to invite dialogue with the Russian historical avant-garde ...

- Oh, this is already done many times, I not thought about it in connection with the Biennale.

- And what do you think? Do you already have a theme, the main idea of the exhibition?

- I do not have a theme, but there's an idea. I do not like all those fussy poster for the exhibition, because the main task of any biennale is always the same - to provide some vision of what is happening in the world of art. I would like to show the works of authors who are little seen in Russia - by artists from Africa, Asia and Oceania. But the show differently than the show has become so fashionable in recent contemporary art of China and India. I want to show not only the artists included in the system of contemporary art, but that is outside the metropolitan areas, in different environments, with different purposes - for example, everything that relates to religious practices.

- Moscow Biennale will be devoted to religious art? You probably know how painful in Russia make up the relationship of modern artists who try to talk about religion and the Orthodox community ...

- Yes, I heard about this and I think that the exhibition that I do will be somehow linked to this discussion. But I would not like it all comes down only to the subject - in art there are many interesting things that have no relationship to religion, as I mentioned, trying to explain his point of view.

- At the Biennale will be limited to representatives of exotic cultures, or join them and more familiar to us Western artists?

- I just started working on the project and yet can not name names. I have yet to meet with artists and discuss with them my ideas, see how they will react to them. But, of course, will the Western artists, and Russia - I hope they will be more than two first Moscow Biennale.

- Who of contemporary Russian artists you have worked as a curator?

- Since Ilya Kabakov, Eric Bulatov. With someone, although I did not work, but well aware of himself - this is Nikita Alexeev, Vadim Zakharov and Yuri Albert. For many I met, when we, along with Andrei Erofeev did Biennale in Montenegro - in Cetinje.

- How do you work with artists? You picked up pre-existing works, suitable for your concept, or work together with the artist?

- With regard to Russian artists, I would like to order them or works, or at least show the brand-new work, and not the fact that local habitue exhibitions and already know by heart. With regard to foreign artists, I feel much freer - there are many products that Moscow has not yet been shown. Yes, 30 years ago to show the work in Venice, which was already in the «Document», considered a bad habit. But with the current hundred-odd Biennale is nothing scary in that show in Moscow, a work which has already been in, say, Kwangju, or Yokohama. We must work very quickly, and I just need a few willing to work, to which I can rely, at the exposition. When all the artists is given carte blanche, to build in advance of drama, it is simply impossible. At the same time, given the vast geography of my exhibition in Moscow to bring all the parties is not possible for purely financial reasons - in anologichnom situation is all the Biennale.

- Moscow Biennale What may be different from many other biennales in the world - I am talking not only about your project, but in general, its place and role on the world art scene?

- should not deceive ourselves and believe that the Moscow Biennale in Venice will soon equal or of «Docs». Little place in the sun - and you know very well how many there are today a Biennale. Robert Storr counted them, I think, 110 pieces, although in reality this figure is higher. In any case Bienniale gives a special status to the Russian art scene, and Moscow. But for me it is primarily an exhibition in Moscow that will allow the public to see new works from around the world, created by artists classroom, to see the exhibition, which asks what today's world in terms of culture and art.

- But the question may be formulated in different ways depending on the local context - in Moscow, he sounds different than in Venice, Lyon, Sao Paulo or Shanghai ...

- But do Moscow Biennale yet inviting Western curators. If it was to solve some typical Russian problems, it would have had to do domestic curator. But I hope that the exhibition, which makes the curator of the help the local intellectuals and artists to go beyond the limits of one and the same range of issues and the same methods to answer them.

Sources: www.kommersant.ru