“Made In” New Works, Plamen Dejanoff Body-Without-Organs, Daniela Kostova

Isola Art Center
www.isolartcenter.org
info@isolartcenter.org
tel/ +39 6057111 / +39 3336753542

hosted by
AssabOne
http://www.assab-one.org
via Assab, 1
20132 Milano
tel +39 02 2828546

“Made In”
New Works, Plamen Dejanoff
Body-Without-Organs, Daniela Kostova

Curated by Katia Anguelova

Opening– Monday, 28th May 2007, 7pm

29th May– 28 June 2007
Assab One (piano terra)
Via Assab, 1 20132 Milano
(from Tuesday-Fryday -3pm-7pm)

Isola Art Center runs the risk of losing the spaces in which it has
operated
since 2003, and no suitable alternative space in which to continue its
activity has been proposed.
Temporary Isola Art Center is hosted from AssabOne, an exhibition space
founded by Elena Quarestani that produces and promotes cultural and art
projects. Isola Art Center has worked with 1500 square meters of
exhibition space on the second floor of the industrial building known as the
"Stecca degli Artigiani", owned by the city. The space contains a permanent
collection of artworks inserted in the architecture of the building by
international artists like Marjetica Potrc, Tania Brughiera, Seamus
Farrell and Italian artists like Michelangelo Pistoletto, Stefano Arienti, Luca
Pancrazzi, Massimo Bartolini, Gabriele Di Matteo, Vedovamazzei, Loris
Cecchini and Bernardo Giorgi.

For this event Katia Anguelova has invited Daniela Kostova and Plamen
Dejanoff –residents of NY USA and Vienna, Austria respectively. The
two artists share a common Bulgarian origin that also acts as a starting
point for their projects.

Plamen Dejanoff’s project originates from the relationships between
art, culture and economy, issues that the artist has been investigating for
some years now. In Planets of Comparison Dejanoff explores the relations
between the systems of art and of economy. Here he acts simultaneously as
artist, manager and collector.

In the nineties Dejanoff bought seven houses in Veliko Tarnovo (a city
in the centre of Bulgaria) to be restructured by Plamen Dejanoff in
collaboration with a number of architecture studies (Kьhn/Malvezzi,
Vienna, Berlin, Grьntuch & Ernst Berlin, Gruppo A12 Milano, Cocktail Lyon) and
afterwards used by institutions, galleries and museums for cultures
activities. The project started with MUMOK, the Museum of Modern Art
Ludwig Foundation Vienna, where a bronze statue representing a part of the
first realised house was exhibited in the spring of 2006 (the project was
realised
by Plamen Dejanoff with the Austian architects Wiederin/Konzett and
Hubmann &Vass). The project will then move to Veliko Tarnovo where MUMOK will
be establishing a space in the Balkans for the next years. Plamen combines
strategies of art and business in a similar way to how Andy Warhol
combined Pop and Conceptual Art.

For this exhibition Plamen Dejanoff presents new phases of the project
on MUMOK house in Veliko Tarnovo, designed together with architects Erich
Hubmann & Andreas Vass from Vienna, featuring drawings, maquettes, and
new objects branded ‘dejanoff’ that are actually realised in
collaboration with Bulgarian craftmens and “made in Bulgaria”. This project, playful
and economically rewarding at the same time, transforms the existential
experience into a sort of joint venture which is typical in the real
economy, thus continuing his investigation into art and economy.

Daniela Kostova uses her documentary video, Body-Without-Organs, as raw
material for an installation, designed originally for Isola Art Centre,
composed of a series of ‘social environments’. The passage through
the installation invites viewers to reflect on the issues of emigration,
travelling and music as a point of integration.

The title of the work borrows the concept of “body-without-organs”
from Gilles Deleuze. The expression “le corps sans organs” may seem
obscure, but its definition is quite clear. It means conceptualizing the body
without reducing it to an organic form, not a body deprived of the organs,
instead a body on its way to differentiation. The body without organs is
therefore in-organic life and, as such, a power of individualization not yet
turned into an organism.
The exhibition becomes a means for cultural dialogue and confrontation
between geographical places that are different yet near. Inspired by
the New York music scene of ethno-mesh and gypsy-punk the installation
describes the Bulgarian Bar ironically named the Bulgarian Cultural Centre in New
York City seen through the eyes of those who recently emigrated there.
Bulgarian Bar is not a “cultural center” but rather a cultural
imaginary and an area of converging opposite tendencies: on one hand the
institutional representation of the National Cultural Center and on the other the
essence of the nomad spirit expressed through the gypsy-punk music.

Dancing in the Bulgarian Bar transcends the usual bodily function,
overiding it with new possible meanings provided by the orgasmic fusion with
music. The experience in the Bulgarian Bar becomes an anthropological metaphor
that shows plurality of culture. The work of Daniela Kostova becomes the
search for one’s self in the human community, where spiritual values are the
consequence of collective adventures. It is not by accident that DJ
Boro says of Gypsy music – “the Gypsy idea works very well, because they
don’t have a state. They are continuously nomadic”. In short, the party
depends on the people’s possibilities and on their capacity to forget their own
identities.

For further information please contact the curator of the exhibition,
Katia Anguelova, zebonski@fastwebnet.it

For image material please contact info@isolartcenter.org

Thanks to Elena Quarestani and AssabOne

Supporting body:
European Cultural Foundation
Provincia di Milano