KONKRET GLOBAL!

International conference in connection with the exhibition “KONKRET GLOBAL!“ at the Museum im Kulturspeicher, Würzburg, in cooperation with the Institute of art history of the University of Würzburg.

Organized by Luisa Heese (Museum im Kulturspeicher, Würzburg), Anke Kempkes (independent scholar and curator), and Eckhard Leuschner (Institute of art history of the University of Würzburg). Supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation

CONFERENCE PROGRAM

TUESDAY, 25 OCTOBER

13:30
GUIDED TOUR through the exhibition “KONKRET GLOBAL” with the curators Luisa Heese and Anke Kempkes

14:00
WELCOME by Luisa Heese, director of the Museum im Kulturspeicher Würzburg

14:15
WELCOME by Prof. Dr. Eckhard Leuschner, Institute for Art History, Würzburg University

14:30
INTRODUCTION to “KONKRET GLOBAL!” by Co-Curator Anke Kempkes

15:00
KEYNOTE
Andrea Giunta: “Simultaneous Avant-gardes in Latin America: Concrete Developments and Critical Distances Towards Imagined Futures After 1945”
Andrea Giunta is an Argentine art historian, professor, researcher, and curator. In 2017/18 Co-curator of “Radical Women. Latin American Art, 1960-1985” at Hammer Museum, Brooklyn Museum and Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo.

15:40
Ayelen Pagnanelli: “Lidy Prati’s resistances”
Ayelen Pagnanelli is a doctoral fellow at the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) and a Phd candidate examining gender and sexuality in the abstract art scenes in Buenos Aires from 1937 to 1963 at the Centro de Investigaciones en Arte y Patrimonio (CIAP), UNSAM. Pagnanelli holds an M.A in
Argentine and Latin American Art History from the Instituto de Altos Estudios Sociales, Universidad Nacional de San Martín and a B.A. in Gender Studies and Studio Art from Skidmore College, New York, USA. Pagnanelli has been awarded a Princeton University Libraries Grant for the year 2020-2021.

16:15
Abigail Winograd: "tbc"
Abigail Winograd is exhibition curator at the Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago. She is the curator of "Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40", a multi-site exhibition opening at 20 venues across the city of Chicago beginning May of 2021. Her scholarly research has focused on the emergence of aberrant abstractions in post-war South America as well as museological approaches to expanding canonical narratives. In 2017-18 she co-organized "The Other Transatlantic: Kinetic and Op Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America" for the Museum of Modern Art Warsaw (traveled to Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, and SESC Piñheros, São Paulo, 2017–2018) as well as "Abstract Experiments: Latin American art on paper after 1950" (2017) for the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2016–2017, she was the Transhistorical Curatorial Fellow at the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, the Netherlands, where she organized "A Global Table: Still Life, Colonialism, and Contemporary Art" (2017).

16:50
COFFEEBREAK

17:00
Luis Sandes: “Leopoldo Haar: utilitarian artworks”
Luis Sandes is an art historian from Brazil. He currently is a PhD candidate at the University of Sao Paulo—USP, Brazil, with a research project on contemporary Brazilian art related to geometric abstraction. He holds a master’s degree in Social Sciences from the Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo—PUC-SP. In his master’s dissertation, he developed research on Brazilian Concrete Art, an abstract geometric avantgarde of the 1950s. He has delivered several papers in academic congresses, both national and international, and has published interviews, book review, and academic papers in various academic publications, both Brazilian and international. Researcher and content producer for Bloomsbury’s "Art Market Dictionary" and Itau Cultural Digital Encyclopaedia of Brazilian Art. Reviewer for journals and city halls across Brazil in the field of arts. His publications can be found at <https://usp-br.academia.edu/LuisFSSandes>.

17:35
Rafael DíazCasas: “About Geometric Art in Cuba in the second half of the 20th Century. The case of Carmen Herrera and Lolo Soldevilla“
Rafael DiazCasas is a New York-based independent curator, art critic, and art consultant born in Havana, Cuba. Since 2004, he has been researching and writing about abstraction in Cuba in the second half of the twentieth century, focusing on the development of geometric abstraction in the island since the late 1930s. DiazCasas has served as a lecturer with diverse educational institutions and private collections, including the School of Visual Arts, New York; the Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies; the City University of New York; and the David Rockefeller Collection, New York. In 2021, he served as juror for the CINTAS Foundation Fellowship. He has contributed to numerous art magazines, journals, catalogues, and books in the United States, Latin America, and Europe, and his articles are published regularly in Art Nexus, Cuban Art News, Art on Cuba, Noticias de Arte, Ars Magazine, and Arte Cubano, among others. He is co-author of the books "Hard Light: The Work of Emilio Sanchez" (Prestel London – New York, 2011) and "Loló Soldevilla: Constructing Her Universe" (Hatje Cantz, Berlin – Sean Kelly Gallery, New York, 2019). DiazCasas has curated exhibitions internationally including "City of Queen Anne's Lace: Campins and Yaque"; "Parallel Paths – Recent Works by Two Cuban Concrete Painters: Salvador Corratgé and José Rosabal"; and "The Silent Shout: Cuban Abstraction (1950-2013)".

18:10
Eduardo Terrazas: “Possibilities of a Structure”
A conversation with the Mexican artist and architect Eduardo Terrazas (pre-recorded)

WEDNESDAY, 26 OCTOBER

10:00
WELCOME (Luisa Heese, Eckhard Leuschner, Anke Kempkes)

10:15
Fernando Oliva: “Rubem Valentim: Afro-Brazilian symbols”
Fernando Oliva is a PhD researcher (USP, São Paulo University) and curator at MASP, São Paulo, where he participated in "Rubem Valentim: Afro-Atlantic Constructions" (2018), "Maria Auxiliadora: Daily Life, Painting and Resistance" (2018); and "Tarsila do Amaral: Cannibalizing Modernism" (2019), among other exhibitions. He belonged to the 3rd Bienal da Bahia curatorial team (2014) and is part of the ANPAP (Associação Nacional de Pesquisadores em Artes Plásticas) curatorial committee.

10:50
Stefano Setti: “Beyond Concretism. Tomás Maldonado and Ernesto Nathan Rogers”
PhD thesis on the Italian debates about the Synthesis of the Arts, 1933-1954, Università Cattolica (Milan) in co-supervision with CUNY (New York). He collaborates with the courses of Contemporary Art (Università Cattolica, Milan) and Contemporary Architecture (University of Bologna) and with CRA.IT (Research Center on Italian Abstract Art) where he is carrying out research on some protagonists of the Italian MAC (Movimento Arte Concreta) and on the display of Abstract Art. He has worked and collaborated with different public and private institutions (editorial projects, exhibitions and archival research), among which: Ministry of Culture, Rome; Franco Albini Foundation, Milan; Pietro Consagra Foundation, Milan; Agostino Bonalumi Foundation, Milan; Lucio Fontana Foundation, Milan. His research focuses on the relationship between art and architecture through the lens of criticism, politics, national identity, artistic processes, materials, media and exhibitions.

11:25
Morad Montazami: “Casablanca Art School: Platforms and Patterns for a Postcolonial Avant-garde“
Morad Montazami is an art historian, publisher and curator. After serving at Tate Modern (London) between 2014-2019 as curator for "Middle East and North Africa", he developed the publishing and curatorial platform Zamân Books & Curating to explore Arab, African and Asian modernities. He published numerous essays on artists such as Zineb Sedira, Walid Raad, Latif Al-Ani, Faouzi Laatiris, Michael Rakowitz, Mehdi Moutashar, Behjat Sadr, etc. and curated among other projects "Bagdad Mon Amour", Institut des cultures d’Islam, Paris, 2018; "New Waves: Mohamed Melehi and the Casablanca Art School", The Mosaic Rooms, London/MACCAL, Marrakech/Alserkal Arts Foundation, Dubai, 2019-2020 ; "Douglas Abdell : Reconstructed Traphouse", Cromwell Space, Londres, 2021 ; "Monaco-Alexandria. The Great Detour. World-Capitals and Cosmopolitan Surrealism", Nouveau Musée National, Monaco, 2021-2022.

12:00
Kirsten Scheid: “Hard Forms, Fluid Bodies: The Experience of Concrete in Choucair's Oeuvre and Beyond It”
Kirsten Scheid is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the American University of Beirut and Affiliated Faculty in the Department of Fine Arts and Art History. She researches Imagination; Islamic and Arabic Theories of Visuality; and Modern and Contemporary Art between cultural junctures, especially in the Middle East and North Africa. She co-curated “Historical Modernisms in the Middle East” for ArteEast’s Virtual Gallery (2008), “The Arab Nude: the Artist as Awakener” (Beirut, 2016), and "Jerusalem Actual and Possible: 9th Edition of the Jerusalem Show" (Jerusalem, 2018). She has also co-founded a cultural resource center and an Arabic children’s book line (Hikayat walad min Bayrut 2004) in Beirut. Kirsten’s research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, L’École des hautes études en Sciences Sociales, and the Palestinian American Research Center, among others, and she was the Clark/Oakley Humanities Fellow at the Clark Art Institute (2019-2020). Her writing has appeared in Aggregate, Anthropology Now, ArtMargins, International Journal for Middle East Studies, MERIP, Museum Anthropology, and Jadaliyya. Forthcoming book: "Fantasmic Objects: Art and Sociality from Lebanon, 1920-1950" with Indiana University Press.

12:35
Chris Spring: “Atta Kwami - A Tribute”
Chris Spring is an artist and writer. He has had solo shows in recent years at The Stash Gallery, Vout-O-Reenee’s (2019), at JG Contemporary Gallery (2021) and at TM Lighting Gallery (2022). He curated many exhibitions on the arts of Africa, all of which featured work by contemporary artists, including: "The Sainsbury African Galleries" (2001), "La Bouche du Roi by Romuald Hazoumé" (2007), "Social Fabric: Textiles of Eastern and Southern Africa" (2013), "South Africa, Art of a Nation" (2016) with John Giblin, "Human Nature: Barthélémy Toguo" (2019). His books include "Angaza Afrika: African Art Now" (2008, Winner of the ART BOOK AWARD for 2009), "African Textiles Today" (2012, Winner of the Choice (USA) award for outstanding academic titles), "African Art Close Up" (2013) and "South Africa, Art of a Nation" (2016) with John Giblin. Chris is an ambassador for The Africa Centre, London, and a trustee of the October Gallery.

13:00
LUNCH BREAK

14:00
Iftikhar Dadi: “On Anwar Jalal Shemza and Rasheed Araeen“
Iftikhar Dadi is an artist, writer, curator, researcher, and Associate Professor at Cornell University in New York. Dadi’s research examines art as a global and networked practice from the late nineteenth century to the present, informed by theorizations of modernity, contemporaneity, and postcoloniality. He brings these methodological insights to the study of the modern and contemporary art of South Asia, the Middle East, and their diasporas.
Dadi currently serves on the editorial and advisory boards of Archives of Asian Art and Bio-Scope: South Asian Screen Studies, and was a member of the editorial board of Art Journal (2007-11). He is co-director of Cornell’s Institute for Comparative Modernities, and has served as Chair of Cornell’s Department of Art (2010-14) and Director of Cornell’s South Asia Program (2015-16). Co-curated exhibitions include "Lines of Control" on partitions and borders (Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell, 2012, and Nasher Museum at Duke University, 2013); "Tarjama/Translation" on the contemporary art of the Middle East and Central Asia (Queens Museum of Art, 2009, and Herbert F. Johnson Museum, 2010); and "Unpacking Europe" on the relation between Europe and the postcolonial world (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Rotterdam, 2001). Iftikhar Dadi received his PhD in History of Art at Cornell University.

14:40
Anke Kempkes: “Samia Halaby’s Kinetic Digital Paintings”
Digital presentation at the conference of her pieces:
“For Olga Rozanowa”, 1987
“Painting 8”, 1987
“Sound Painting 2”, 1987

15:15
Zsofi Valyi-Nagy: “From Concrete to Computer art”
Zsofi Valyi-Nagy is a predoctoral fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and a PhD candidate in art history at the University of Chicago, where she is completing her dissertation “Vera Molnar’s Programmed Abstraction: Computer Graphics and Geometric Abstract Art in Postwar Europe.” She was previously a DAAD fellow at the Institut für Medienwissenschaft at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and a Fulbright fellow at the Centre André Chastel in Paris. Her writing has appeared in Art Journal, Right Click Save, and HOLO: Emerging Trajectories in Art, Science, and Technology, and in the forthcoming volume Theorising the Artist Interview, edited by Lucia Farinati and Jennifer Thatcher. She is also a practicing artist.

15:50
CLOSING REMARKS