Suns and Neons above Kazakhstan

7 June – 29 October 2017

A group show of Kazakhstani contemporary artists Suns and Neons above Kazakhstan opens in YARAT Contemporary Art Space, Baku. The exhibition brings together seminal works of the 1990s and the early 2000s from 16 Kazakhstani artists including Yerbossyn Meldibekov, Almagul Menlibayeva, Yelena and Viktor Vorobyev, Rustam Khalfin and Said Atabekov. The show aims to deconstruct a romanticized image of Kazakhstan as a vast and largely unpopulated geography that for decades played upon the collective imagination. Suns and Neons above Kazakhstan will run through 29 October 2017.

VIVA ARTE VIVA. The 57th Venice Biennale has opened

13 May – 26 November 2017

The 57^th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia has officially started. This year’s edition titled Viva Arte Viva is curated by Christine Macel. Works of the leading contemporary artists are traditionally presented at the two venues – Biennale Gardens (Giardini) and Arsenale. National pavilions of 80 different countries are also open to the public. Yelena and Viktor Vorobyev represented by Aspan Gallery display their installation The Artist is Asleep (1996) at the Biennale’s main pavilion at Giardini. The artist duo’s programmatic work can be seen through 26 November.

www.labiennale.org

Aspan Gallery Group Show 'Painting Resistance'

20 April - 4 June 2017

Aspan Gallery presents its first group show Painting Resistance in Almaty. The exhibition showcases the works by three Central Asian contemporary artists - Yelena Vorobyeva, Bakhyt Bubikanova and Valery Ruppel. All of them share a common interest in the themes of everyday life.

The group show Painting Resistance is on display at Villa Boutiques & Restaurants's EXPO Hall (140A Al-Farabi) through 4 June 2017.

Yelena and Viktor Vorobyev in the 57th Venice Biennale

13 May – 26 November 2017

Aspan Gallery congratulates Yelena and Viktor Vorobyev on being the first artists from Central Asia to participate in the Venice Biennale. This year's project curated by Christine Macel is titled VIVA ARTE VIVA and, according to Macel, is "an exclamation, an expression of the passion for art and for the state of the artist". Vorobyevs will present their installation The Artist Is Asleep (1996) in the biennale's main exhibition space in the Giardini. Last time the installation was shown in Vorobyevs' eponymous retrospective exhibition at the Kasteev Museum of Arts in Almaty in 2015, organised by Aspan Gallery and curated by Viktor Misiano

Sergey Maslov's solo show 'Astral Nomad'

27 January - 31 March 2017

Sergey Maslov's solo show Astral Nomad has opened at the National Museum in Astana. The exhibition features rarely seen works from the collection of Nevzorovs Eastern Kazakhstan Regional Museum.

'Limited Liability Pavilion 2.0' group show has opened in Kyiv

21 December 2016 – 8 February 2017

A group show of Kazakhstani contemporary artists Limited Liability Pavilion 2.0 has opened in Kyiv art centre ‘Closer’. The exhibition continues Limited Liability Pavilion’s first edition which took place during the 2015 Venice Biennale and unofficially replaced Kazakhstan’s missing national pavilion. The show which unites different generations of Kazakhstani artists, including Yelena and Viktor Vorobyev, Rustam Khalfin, Sergey Maslov, Yerbossyn Meldibekov and Said Atabekov will be on view through 8 February 2017. 

Almagul Menlibayeva and Rustam Khalfin in a group show 'Urgent Conversations: Athens - Antwerp'

31 October 2016 – 29 January 2017

The impulse behind the show, co-produced by Athens National Museum of Contemporary Art and the M HKA Museum Antwerp,is the necessity of cultural dialogue on a global scale and within multifaceted Europe. The exhibition is structured around 22 notions with each time work of three different artists from the museums' collections in a dialogue around it, the total consisting of more than 70 works from 66 artists, including Almagul Menlibayeva and Rustam Khalfin. Urgent Conversations: Athens - Antwerp is running until 29 January 2017 at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens and will later travel to Antwerp.

www.emst_muhka.ensembles.org

Said Atabekov in a group show from the collection of UniCredit Bank in Milan

20 December 2016 – 19 January 2017

The exhibition Look at Me! Da Nadar a Gursky: i ritratti nella Collezione d'arte UniCredit will showcase the most representative works from the collection of UniCredit Bank. The show, conceived as a review of photography from the end of XIX century to the present day, will feature 170 works from various artists, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Diane Arbus, Gerhard Richter, Andreas Gursky and Said Atabekov.

Vyacheslav Akhunov’s works on show in Venice

4 June – 10 October, 2016

Palazzo Fortuny in Venice is holding a series of exhibitions of private collections entitled Quand fondra la neige où ira le blanc [When the Snow Melts, Where Does the White Go?]. The exhibition’s aim is to examine the question: how has the role of the art collector evolved from the time of the great Renaissance collections to the present day? The first show from the series is dedicated to Enea Righi's private collection, which includes works by artists like Alighiero Boetti, Daniel Buren, Lawrence Weiner, Walid Raad, Thomas Hirschhorn, Philippe Parreno and Vyacheslav Akhunov. 

fortuny.visitmuve.it

Vorobyevs' "Petrifactions (Keyboard)"

Specially for the Smart Park in Naryn (Kyrgyzstan), built with the support of the Aga Khan Foundation as part of the University of Central Asia campus, Yelena and Viktor Vorobyev created a new monumental site-specific work, continuing their Petrifactions series. The Keyboard consists of a dozen granite blocks engraved with computer keyboard symbols.