Charles Esche
Senior Research Fellow
Director Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
Co-Editor of Afterall Journal and Afterall Books
Research Interests
Contemporary Art
Current Research
In line with my role as director of the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, I am busy looking at the terms in which art museums and other art institutions can function within a city and with particular communities. The question in general is: what is the point of a city art museum in the twenty-first century? It includes questions about global cultural exchanges, local communities, public identities, singularity and the public sphere. At the same time, through the Community and Art workshops series, I am exploring how creative communities in diverse parts of the world can connect, learn from each other and break down nationalistic or regional barriers to a global, but differentiated, cultural sphere. The outcome of this research is in the form of exhibitions, workshops, public projects and texts.
Charles Esche and Mark Lewis co-founded Afterall, a research and publishing organisation, at Central Saint Martins in 1998. Each issue of Afterall Journal brings together five international artists whose work seems particularly pertinent to the wider cultural debates of the moment. In 2002 Los-Angeles based artist and writer Thomas Lawson joined Afterall as co-editor of the journal. Subsequently a second Afterall office was opened at California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles.
In 2006 the London office of Afterall launched its new publishing initiative Afterall Books with the following titles:
- One Work - a series of small publications that will, over time, form a uniformly designed library of books focused upon important single works of art. The first three books in the series are: Bas Jan Ader: In Search of the Miraculous, by Jan Verwoert, Hollis Frampton: (nostalgia), by Rachel Moore and Ilya Kabakov: The Man Who Flew into Space from his Apartment, by Boris Groys
- East Art Map, Contemporary Art and Eastern Europe, edited by the IRWIN group the first in a series of survey publications that aim to look at currently significant areas of modern and contemporary art practice through the commissioning and reprinting of key texts. East Art Map presents a reconstruction of the missing history of contemporary art, art networks and art conditions in Eastern Europe from the East European perspective.
Afterall Books are distributed by The MIT Press
Recent Research Activity
2005 Istanbul, Istanbul Biennial 2005 (with Vasif Kortun, Esra Sarigedik Öktem, November Paynter)
2005 CORK CAUCUS, Cork, 2005 (with Annie Fletcher)
2000-04 Director, Rooseum Center for Contemporary Art, Malmö, Sweden
2002 Co-curator, Gwangju Biennale 2002, Gwangju, Republic of Korea (with Hou Hanru and Song Wan Kyung)
1998-01 Curatorial Adviser, Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, Liverpool, England
Selected curated exhibitions and projects:
EindhovenIstanbul, Van Abbemuseum, 2005
Afteralll 7, Apex Art, New York, 2005
Nedko Solakov, Rooseum, Casino Luxembourg, OK Centrum, Graz, 2003-4
Surasi Kusolwong, Rooseum, 2004
Fixing the Bridge, Community and Art workshop 2, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 2003
10 Biennale de l'image en mouvement, Geneva, Switzerland, 2003 (selector)
Cream 3, Phaidon Press, 2003 (curator/writer)
Mark Lewis, The Near and Far Real, Rooseum and Sala Rekalde, Bilbao, 2003
Creeping Revolution including Bas Jan Ader, Sture Johannesson, Silke Otto-Knapp. Wilhelm Sasnal and Lily van der Stocker; Rooseum, 2003
Joao Penalva and Matts Leiderstam, Rooseum, 2002
Superflex, Tools, Rooseum and Museum für zeitgenössiche Kunst, Leipzig, 2002
Baltic Babel, independent artist groups and alternative spaces around the Baltic Sea, Rooseum, 2002
Community and Art Workshop 1, Seoul, Republic of Korea, 2002
ARCO 2001 Art Fair, United Kingdom Focus, Madrid, Spain (co-curator)
Michel Auder, Solo, Rooseum, 2001
Vi - Intentional Communities including Pavel Althamer, Johanna Billing, Oyvind Fahlström, Annika Eriksson, Gordon Matta-Clark, Mike Nelson and Arturas Raila, Rooseum and CAC, Vilnius, 2001
Conferences/Talks
Transform, Lentos Museum, Linz, 2005
Cordially Invited, BAK, Utrecht, 2004
Zagreb Cultural Capital 3000, Zagreb, 2004
Nuevos Paradigmas para el Arte, La Caixa, Barcelona, 2004
Museums in Motion, De Balie, Amsterdam, 2003
Cumbre/Summit, Arteleku, Bilbao, 2003
South London Gallery, London, 2003 (with Simon Starling)
Platform, Istanbul, 2003
Talk of the Town, De Appel, Amsterdam, 2002
Polyphony of Voices, Krakow, 2002
BAK, Utrecht, 2002
Stadtgalerie Bern, Bern, 2002
Lecture tour of SCCA, Ljubljana; WHW, Zagreb and Lazzaretti, Dubrovnik, 2002
Gasthof, Städelschule, Frankfurt/Main, 2002
Sala Montcada, Barcelona, 2002
Die Kunst des Austellens, Stuttgart Art Academy, 2001
Projec4l, Istanbul, Turkey, 2001
Juries/Selection boards
Jury, B.A.C.A European Art Prize, Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht, 2005
Jury, Wolfgang Hahn Preis, Museum Ludwig, Köln, 2005
Jury, Curatorial Training Programme, De Appel, 2003
Authored Books
Experimental Institutionalism, further collected essays, Baglam Press, Istanbul, forthcoming
Modest Proposals, collected essays, Baglam Press, Istanbul, 2005
Selected Published Texts (in books/catalogues)
'Still Occupied, though we forget' in Artur Zmijewski, Venice Biennial Polish Pavilion, 2005
'Foolish Optimism' in Collective Creativity, Fredericianum, Kassel, 2005
BikvanderPol, monograph, Nai, Rotterdam, 2005
Pavel Althamer, Bonnefante Museum, Maastricht, 2005
Ross Sinclair, Badische Kunstverein, 2005
Sean Snyder, Metropolis M, NL, 2005
'Possibility and Democratic Deviance' in The 153rd Anniversary of the Communist Manifesto, Zagreb, 2004
'Family Values', in Claudia and Julia Müller, Kunstmuseum Thun, 2004
'In the belly of the monster' in Shifting Map, Nai, Amsterdam, 2004
Tobias Rehberger, A reader, Landesbank Baden Württemburg, 2004
Haegue Yang, Art Sonje Centre, Seoul, 2003
Superflex, Galerie für zeitgenössiche Kunst, Leipzig and W. König, 2003
The possibility forum, Artlink, Sydney, vol 22, no.4, 2002
'We dig repetition' in Olaf Nicolai, Kunstverein Wolfsburg, 2002
Dirk Fleischmann, Manifesta 4, Frankfurt/Main, 2002
Urgent Painting, Musée d'Art moderne de la ville de Paris, 2002
A selection about cannibalism and book burning, Olaf Nicolai Reader, Galerie für Zeitgenössiche Kunst, Leipzig, 2002
Julika Rudelius, catalogue essay, Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam, 2001
Art 2030, consonni, Bilbao, 2001
'Modest Proposals or why the choice is limited to how the surplus is to be squandered', Berlin Biennale 2, catalogue essay, 2001
'Protoacademies' in Education, Information, Entertainment, Akademie der Bildenden Künsten, Vienna, 2001
Web Links:
http://www.afterall.org/
www.mitpress.mit.edu/afterall
http://www.vanabbemuseum.nl/
http://www.corkcaucus.org/
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