Page 36 - La Biennale di Venezia issue of World of Art Magazine

LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA
58TH INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION

CYPRUS
Untimely, Again
CHRISTOFOROS SAVVA, WINTER Commissioner: Louli Michaelidou. Curator: Jacopo Crivelli Visconti.
LANDSCAPE, 1962, MIXED MEDIA ON Exhibitor: Christoforos Savva.
HARDBOARD, 58 X 70 CM. COURTESY Venue: Associazione Culturale Spiazzi, Castello 3865
OF BANK OF CYPRUS CULTURAL
FOUNDATION. PHOTO: LOUCA STUDIOS

The coexistence of styles and the wide range of themes and
references that appear in Savva’s work seem to suggest that strictly
formal questions were not his main concern. It could be said that
the core of his practice constantly shifted toward a place that was
beyond both the form and the content of any individual work. Taking
his activity as a whole, there is a sense that this “beyondness”
encapsulates his role in Cypriot society and in the local artistic
system that was being organised at the time. In May of 1960 (the
year Cyprus gained independence from Britain) Savva founded,
together with Welsh artist Glyn Hughes, Apophasis [Decision], the
first independent cultural centre of the newly established Republic
of Cyprus. The impressive array of activities hosted at Apophasis
included art exhibitions, performances, drawings by children, a
joint exhibition of Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot artists (a quite
audacious endeavor for that time), plays, talks, poetry readings, and
film screenings. The almost idiosyncratic diversity of Apophasis is
comparable to Savva’s own effervescent artistic production: in a
polarised and divided society, that had barely emerged from a long
anti-colonial struggle before it plunged into violent intercommunal
conflict, the habit of including opposites became no less than a
political statement. (excerpt)

CZECH & SLOVAK REPUBLIC
Former Uncertain Indicated
Commissioner: Adam Budak, National Gallery Prague.
STANISLAV KOLÍBAL
WHITE RELIEF 2016 Curator: Dieter Bogner.
WOOD, DRAWING, IRON Exhibitor: Stanislav Kolibal.
150 X 108 X 5 CM Venue: Giardini

The title of the exhibition and the catalogue, Former Uncertain
Indicated, is derived from Kolibal´s conceptual installation
conceived in the mid-1970s. Its poetic and ambiguous character
is crucial for the understanding of the artist’s position regarding
time, life and his art. Kolíbal’s artistic work is unquestionably
determined by the “most interesting times” he experienced in
Czechoslovakia since the early 1940s.
The exhibition will combine an outside “spatial drawing”, related
to modernist façade of the 1926 masterful architecture of the
Czech and Slovak Pavilion designed by the Czech architect
Otakar Novotny, with a large-scale “wall drawing” inside of the
building, both made for this occasion. At the same time, Kolíbal
will present two of his early pioneering series: white sculptures
from the 1960s and four minimalist conceptual wall-installations
from the 1970s made out of found materials. (excerpt)

36 WORLD of ART