Now in its fourth edition, Prague Biennale relaunches itself to include the first edition of Prague Biennale Photo. From painting and photography to performance and installation art, this year's large-format edition tracks the most significant aspects of Central European art and beyond. It includes a foreword by the biennial directors, essays by curators and information about the artists included in each section.

Published on the occasion of the very first Prague Biennale, this chunky volume acts as a virtual dictionary of contemporary art. Listed are the works and biographies of 230 established and emerging artists from all over the world, including the more unfamiliar territories of Venezuela, the Basque Countries, China, and Poland, as selected by 20 international curators, including Lauri Firstenberg, Sofia Hernandez, and Jens Hoffmann.

This innovative new history examines in-depth how the growing popularity of large-scale international survey exhibitions, or 'biennials', has influenced global contemporary art since the 1950s. Provides a comprehensive global history of biennialization from the rise of the European star-curator in the 1970s to the emergence of mega-exhibitions in Asia in the 1990s Introduces a global array of case studies to illustrate the trajectory of biennials and their growing influence on artistic expression, from the Biennale de la Méditerranée in Alexandria, Egypt in 1955, the second Havana Biennial of 1986, New York’s Whitney Biennial in 1993, and the 2002 Documenta11 in Kassel, to the Gwangju Biennale of 2014 Explores the evolving curatorial approaches to biennials, including analysis of the roles of sponsors, philanthropists and biennial directors and their re-shaping of the contemporary art scene Uses the history of biennials as a means of illustrating and inciting further discussions of globalization in contemporary art

The book distinctive is listed in points (i) it focuses on Eastern European art covering the historical avant-garde to the post-war and contemporary periods of; (ii) it looks at some key artists in the countries that have not been given so much attention within this content i.e. Georgia, Dagestan, Chechnya and Central Asia; (iii) it looks beyond Eastern Europe to the influence of Russia/Soviet Union in Asia. It explores the theoretical models developed for understanding contemporary art across Eastern Europe and focus on the new generation of Georgian artists who emerged in the immediate years before and after the country’s independence from the Soviet Union; and on to discuss the legacy and debates around monuments across Poland, Russia and Ukraine.helps in Better understanding the postwar and contemporary art in Eastern Europe.

A reader on issues of race, class, and gender in post-Socialist states from an artworld perspective. Come Closer: The Biennale Reader, published on the occasion of the inaugural Prague biennale, considers the present via counter-hegemonic readings of the past. The book explores various perspectives of class, race, and gender differences in post-socialist states, past and present. In societies today that can seem fragmented, alienated, and sealed-off, a feeling of "us" and "them" can potentially emerge. The reliance on a common language to bring people closer often does the opposite, leading to feelings of contempt, anxiety, and fear. By drawing attention to themes of intimacy, care, and empathy, the contributions in this book search for new types of communication that can bring people together. Like language, art can be used to mediate these differences, and to examine issues relating to how people coexist in society. Come Closer comprises republished texts as well as newly commissioned contributions from both emerging and established artists, social and political scientists, and art historians from Eastern Europe, Asia, and the United States. Contributors Jérôme Bazin, Heather Berg, Pavel Berky, Anna Daučíková, Patrick D. Flores, Isabela Grosseová, Vít Havránek, Marie Iljašenko, Rado Ištok, Barbora Kleinhamplová, Eva Koťátková, Kateřina Lišková, Ewa Majewska, Tuan Mami, Alice Nikitinová, Alma Lily Rayner, Sarah Sharma, Jirka Skála, Adéla Souralová, Edita Stejskalová, Tereza Stejskalová, Matěj Spurný, Ovidiu Tichindeleanu, Simone Wille

Coding, Shaping, Making combines inspiration from architecture, mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics and computation to look towards the future of architecture, design and art. It presents ongoing experiments in the search for fundamental principles of form and form-making in nature so that we can better inform our own built environment. In the coming decades, matter will become encoded with shape information so that it shapes itself, as happens in biology. Physical objects, shaped by forces as well, will begin to design themselves based on information encoded in matter they are made of. This knowledge will be scaled and trickled up to architecture. Consequently, architecture will begin to design itself and the role of the architect will need redefining. This heavily illustrated book highlights Haresh Lalvani’s efforts towards this speculative future through experiments in form and form-making, including his work in developing a new approach to shape‐coding, exploring higher‐dimensional geometry for designing physical structures and organizing form in higher-dimensional diagrams. Taking an in-depth look at Lalvani’s pioneering experiments of mass customization in industrial products in architecture, combined with his idea of a form continuum, this book argues for the need for integration of coding, shaping and making in future technologies into one seamless process. Drawing together decades of research, this book will be a thought-provoking read for architecture professionals and students, especially those interested in the future of the discipline as it relates to mathematics, science, technology and art. It will also interest those in the latter fields for its broader implications.