Ostalgia, The New Museum, New York, July 14-October 2, 2011

The narrative of nostalgia defines the exhibition Ostalgia, an unconventional survey of more than 50 artists from various countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Republics, whose "main protagonist," states curator Massmilano Gioni, is "the overarching ideology of Soviet Socialism." The show's title is taken from the German word Ostalgie or "nostalgia for the East" that emerged in the early 1990s to describe a longing for Germany pre-unification, and later elsewhere in Eastern and Western Europe as a collective mourning for the communist past...

Skopje, the capital of the Republic of Macedonia at the moment undergoes one of Europe’s biggest urban and art upheavals - the project is dubbed Skopje 2014. Labeled as a "building bonanza", by the British Guardian, Skopje 2014 project was planned by the Government for several years under relative lack of transparency, until it was officially presented in February 2010.

Identificatory scenarios abound in Rearview Mirror: New Art from Central and Eastern Europe, which is co-produced by The Power Plant Art Gallery in Toronto and the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton. As the site of a subject’s first encounter with their own image as Other, the mirror appears in both literal and figurative guise in a number of the works on display here. And yet the subjectivities invoked in Rearview Mirror resist familiar calls to identification.

Throughout the past two years and in three consecutive exhibitions the Budapest Ludwig Museum has displayed parts of its collection, with an accent on recently acquired or rarely seen artworks. The show Kind of Change, which ran between March and May 2011, offered pieces purchased by or donated to the Ludwig between 2009-2011. The museum's board selected works by Hungarian artists who have already entered the national canon of contemporary art, or who have made a name for themselves internationally, as well as works by a younger generation of East-Central European artists who are anticipated to become household names on the European scene.