Igor Zabel: Contemporary Art Theory - book presentations in Croatia

► Thursday, January 30, 2014, at 8 pm, Gallery Nova, Zagreb
Speakers: Igor Španjol (editor of the book and curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Ljubljana) and Leonida Kovač (theorist, curator and the associate professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Zagreb)

► Thursday, February 13, 2014, at 6 pm, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka
Speakers: Igor Španjol (editor of the book and curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Ljubljana) and Sandra Kržić Roban (art historian, critic, curator, editor-in-chief of the art magazine Život umjetnosti), Moderator: Sabina Salamon (curator at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka)

A year ago, the book Igor Zabel: Contemporary Art Theory was published by JRP Ringier in a co-edition with Les presses du réel, the Igor Zabel Association for Culture and Theory, ERSTE Foundation and Moderna galerija, Ljubljana.

The book provides for the first time in the English language a comprehensive selection of the writings of Igor Zabel (the influentianl Slovenian curator and art historian). This important translation brings forward Zabel’s analytical thinking and writing on modern and contemporary art from Socialist Realism and Conceptual Art to Post-Modernism and Contextual Art, particularly in Slovenia and Eastern Europe.

Writing on numerous artists and exhibition projects for more than two decades, Zabel constituted the very concept of contemporary art in the Slovenian cultural space as a specific art practice and substantially contributed to the global re-definition of art in relation to the great social and geopolitical changes of the 1990s.

His texts are marked with an extraordinary fusion of theoretical discourse and a sense of style that transcends mere descriptiveness, as well as with an exceptional intertwinement of erudition and elegance, critique and humour. Although next year will mark the tenth since his death, Igor Zabel’s texts on contemporary art have lost nothing of their currency and freshness, as many questions he considered in these texts remain open.

The book presentations will give us an opportunity to (re)think some of these questions: What are the methods and conditions of contemporary art (history)? What are the specificities of art (history) coming out of Eastern Europe? What are the new mechanisms of differentiation and exclusion, as well as the possibilities for (cultural) dialogue, in the context of current geopolitical relations.

Partners: Gallery Nova, Zagreb; Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka; and ERSTE Foundation