BELGRADE, Sept. 15 (Xinhua) — The 57th October Salon, Serbia’s biggest international art exhibition, kicked off here Saturday, offering visitors a diverse selection of artists through a set of carefully curated works by internationally recognized masters.
This year’s salon, titled “The Marvelous Cacophony,” and staged at five venues across Serbia’s capital, is curated by Gunnar B. Kvaran and Danielle Kvaran from Oslo, Norway in an attempt to bring together works that express diversity from the contemporary art world.
“The concept of this exhibition is based on the fact that there is no common denominator in contemporary art. There is not only one center of the world, there are centers in all countries and all continents. In this exhibition, we tried to give a humble representation of this diversity that we can see in different international art groups,” Gunnar, who is also the director of the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo, said at the salon’s opening ceremony held at the Belgrade City Museum.
According to the curators, “The Marvelous Cacophony” puts the Serbian and the Belgrade art scenes into an international context, whilst referring to the complex cultural, social and political situation in the region.
The exhibition aims to explore artistic production worldwide by looking into diverse art scenes, uniting different generations, and compiling a constellation of works that express, through their forms, structures and content, the diversity and the richness of cacophonic expression.
Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic, who attended the opening event and toured the exhibition, expressed her satisfaction with the selection of artwork.
“Creative industries are a major opportunity for Serbia’s development. Culture is what makes one society modern, successful and competitive, and I am glad that the October Salon contributed to Serbia’s international reputation,” Brnabic said.
Among the 72 prominent artists whose works have been selected for the 57th October Salon are Serbian painters Vladimir Velickovic and Dusan Otasevic, German painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer and U.S contemporary artist Tom Sax.
The Chinese art scene is represented by young painter and sculptor Cui Jie, with her painting “Bank of China Building,” as well as Cao Fei, whose 42-minute-video “La Town” highlights both the mundaneness and vice of contemporary society through the creation of an obviously fake, alternate world modeled on our own.
Conceptual artist Hu Zhen from Shanghai exhibited his marble sculpture “Eternity-Six Dynasties Period Painted Earthenware Dragon, Sleeping Muse.”
Some of the international stars whose works found place at the exhibition are Japanese painter Takashi Murakami with his “Daruma the Great,” and Icelandic painter Gudmundur Gudmunson, better known as Erro, with his “Silver Sable Saga.”
The biennial October Salon is also on exhibition at the Gallery of the Academy of Science and Arts, Cultural Center of Belgrade, Remont Gallery and the Museum of Contemporary Art. It will run until Oct. 28.
(Photo: blic.rs)
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