MONTREAL.- La Biennale de Montréal announces the appointment of Philippe Pirotte, Director of the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste Städelschule and of Portikus in Frankfurt am Main, as Curator of its 2016 edition.
Following a rigorous international search, Mr. Pirotte has been selected to develop a distinctive programme of exhibitions, publications and events across multiple venues for BNLMTL 2016, the 2016 edition of La Biennale de Montréal, which will be on view from 19 October 2016 to 15 January 2017. BNLMTL 2016 is presented by La Biennale de Montréal and co-produced with the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (MAC).
"The entire Biennale team and our colleagues at the MAC and at our other partner institutions are energized by the appointment of Philippe Pirotte," notes Sylvie Fortin, Executive and Artistic Director of La Biennale de Montréal. "His sustained presence in Montréal and his research across Canada to develop BNLMTL 2016 will impact many communities. In addition, his selection will certainly introduce many international artists to the Biennale's growing public. Mr. Pirotte is an uncompromising curator, a superb exhibition-maker and a gifted writer who has already produced a number of memorable projects. We are pleased to provide him with this challenge and with a significant platform for experimentation."
"I'm thrilled with the opportunity to develop an ambitious international project that engages with Montréal's complexity," states Philippe Pirotte. "At the moment, I am imagining the exhibition as a space that informs us about ourselves—uninvited. Simultaneously playful and fatalistic, it is a space where things can go awry. In that sense, the exhibition does not provide relief because its objects do not necessarily reveal themselves as truths."
The theme or approach for BNLMTL 2016 will be announced later this year, as well as the team of advisors selected by Pirotte to support the development of the project. The list of participating artists and information about key projects will be released in May 2016.
Philippe Pirotte (b. 1972, Belgium) is an art historian, curator, critic, and Director of the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste Städelschule and of Portikus, leading centres for contemporary art in Germany and beyond. Pirotte was one of the co-founders of the contemporary art centre objectif_exhibitions in Antwerp, Belgium. From 2005 to 2011, he was Director of the internationally-renowned Kunsthalle Bern in Switzerland where he organized solo exhibitions by artists such as AnneMie Van Kerckhoven, Owen Land, Oscar Tuazon, Jutta Koether, Allan Kaprow, and Corey McCorkle. From 2004 to 2013, Pirotte held the position of Senior Advisor at the Rijksakademie for Visual Arts in Amsterdam. In 2012, he became Adjunct Senior Curator at the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. He also served as Advising Program Director for the Sifang Art Museum in Nanjing and is an advisor for the Kadist Art Foundation (Paris/San Francisco).
