Adam Szymczyk, director of Documenta 2017 in Athens, is interviewed this week in Deutsche Welle, discussing how the recent financial strife between Germany and Greece bodes for the event.  “We don’t want to illustrate the crisis,” he says.  “We believe that the real image of the crisis doesn’t exist and it perhaps should not be imposed. We just try to exist in this state of crisis, every single day – in Germany and in Greece.” (more…)

Adam Szymczyk, the director for Documenta 14 in Kassel and Athens has stated his interest in exhibited the full collection of works from the Cornelius Gurlitt trove at the exhibition in 2017.  “I am not interested in an exclusive or first spectacular presentation but I would like to show the entire Gurlitt estate in the political and aesthetic context of Documenta 14,” he says.  “Our exhibition provides a unique and timely public platform for such a presentation.”  (more…)

The 2017 edition of Documenta (its 17th total), will share locations between Kassel and Athens, the organization announced today.  The exhibition title Learning from Athens, will look at Greece’s recent financial straits, and its unique position in today’s global affairs.  “What interested me is that Athens is a contemporary metropolitan city of the Mediterranean that is connected to other places across the water,” says Artistic Director Adam Szymczyk.  “I see it as a portal or border or place where people coming from many, many other places can have visibility.” (more…)

Bernd Leifeld, who has served as the director of the Documenta art festival since 1996, has announced that he will step down from his post, having organized four successful editions of the event during his tenure.   “I am leaving with two weeping eyes,” Leifeld said in an interview with the German Press Agency. “But I wanted to decide for myself when I leave.”  (more…)

NY Times reviews this year’s Documenta art fair. “It is alternately inspiring — almost visionary — and insufferable, innovative and predictable, meticulous and sentimentally precious.”

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Fridericianum in Kassel via dOCUMENTA

Every five years, the city of Kassel in Germany plays host to dOCUMENTA, a colossal, 100-day long exhibition of contemporary art from all over the world.  Participating artists are provided at least two years to complete their work and the results are thus consistently thorough and complex.  This year is dOCUMENTA’s thirteenth edition and is expected to attract more than 750,000 visitors, nearly twice that of last year’s Venice Biennale.

Yan Lei‘s  “Limited Art Project”, a room of works completed daily over the past year.  The room and the art hung on its walls will be sprayed over with car paint, retransforming every piece into a blank canvas.  This image is featured on BBC News’ Big Picture series.

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