NeMe: Bucharest Biennale 2006

The appointed curator for the 2006 edition will be Zsolt Petranyi, director of Kunsthalle Budapest. The theme Zsolt Petranyi proposed for the 2006 edition is "Chaos: Flat Images in The Age Of Confusion".

"The «confusion» as part of our lives became a metaphor. It symbolizes the calmness of the resignation of «as it is», when what we know and register is nothing but a small sign of our status quo, when we are just what we see. The preliminary selection of the artists wanted to express the overall of the metaphor of «chaos», by opening widely the geographical directions the works are collected from. I must say, the final list is still under consideration", stated Zsolt Petrányi.

"The Bucharest Biennale will become, in time, as important as the ones from Istanbul or Moscow are. The city of Bucharest deserves to be taken into consideration on the map of international contemporary art, and this show is the one to begin with. The time to break through the isolation of Romania's capital has finally come, and, moreover it feels the urge to convert the isolation into a challenge for the art world. We are interested in the connection between the creative practice and the social developing, between the local, European and universal contexts. In the same time, we are more than delighted to have Zsolt Petranyi as a curator for the biennale, and I really think his choosing was the best decision to take", declared Eugen Radescu, the curator of the 2005 edition, and co-director of Bucharest Biennale.

Bucharest Biennale aims to resolve the twofold problems of tradition and modernity, past and present, localism and global village, strives to attain a balanced status between its aesthetic/artistic quality and popularity by overcoming the feeling of estrangement that the general public has toward the contemporary arts.

Bucharest Biennale is a structure able to transform the Bucharest itself into an ongoing workshop-cum-field of action, for it seeks a way of breaking the cultural isolation -burdensome heritage of the years of communism, and building a strong partnership between Bucharest - which is more than a city, it is a symbol of how political can be reflected in every aspect of life - and Europe.

The Bucharest Biennale's goal is to encourage the artistic creativity, to ease the public access to the culture, to disseminate art, to incite to intercultural dialogue and to underline the importance of the knowledge of European end extra-European contemporary cultures.

During the Bucharest Biennale, which will take place during the 26th May - 27th June 2006, it will be also organized parallel shows.

The final program of the Bucharest Biennale and the parallel shows will be ready and published in February 2006.

The contemporary art biennale are the most important shows of the kind, and they include the main exposition, debates, conferences and parallel shows (such as other expositions, sound performances, dance performances etc).

The Cultural Association Artphoto, the organizer of [artphoto]festival.bucharest, has taken the decision to transform the contemporary arts festival into an International Contemporary Arts Biennale in Bucharest.

It is to mention that Artphoto is a cultural NGO, editing the contemporary art magazine, worldwide-distributed (www.artphoto.ro).

The success the [artphoto]festival.bucharest recorded determined the need to extend the show and its visibility. The "Bucharest Biennale of Contemporary Art" description has been registered as a trade mark, and same its logo.

The executive team of Bucharest Biennale is:

Curator: Zsolt Petranyi
Co-Directors: Razvan Ion & Eugen Radescu
Project Director: Alexandra Hagiu-Manda
Assistant to the Curator: Claudia Martins
Romanian Assistant to the Curator: Sebastian Negulescu