Ludlow 38 is proud to host the press reception in preparation of the 7th Gwangju Biennale, which takes place from September 5 to November 9 in the city of Gwangju, South Korea. The year’s Biennale is curated by the artistic director Okwui Enwezor and the co-curators Hyunjin Kim and Ranjit Hoskote.

Under the title Annual Report: A Year in Exhibitions, the 7th Gwangju Biennale is a report on the distribution system of artistic and cultural forms and a reflection on the intermediary gap between artists, producers, practitioners, and audiences.

Consisting of 127 artists from 36 countries, Annual Report is developed around three principal components: first, On the Road is a report on 36 recent exhibitions that have occurred or have been exhibited elsewhere between 2007 and 2008; Position Papers is a platform dedicated to curatorial proposals and experiments in exhibition practices by curators working in Southeast Asia, North Africa, South Korea, and the United States (Patrick D. Flores, Jang Un Kim, Abdellah Karroum, Sung-Hyen Park, and Claire Tancons); finally, Insertions presents a series of new and independent projects, either commissioned specifically for the biennale or invited as proposals into the exhibition framework.

All three elements of the Biennale bring together a range of activities produced across the span of nearly eighteen months. The exhibition will serve as hosting site, incorporating into its sequence of galleries and sites a series of activities ranging from performances, readings, film screenings, music, dance, theater, to quite a few very unique examples of contemporary exhibition-making. Using the notion of the space of encounter, the Biennale hopes to explore models of cultural exchange, setting up a soft, porous line between context and practice, form and medium, artist and system, institution and locality.

12pm