The Making of Exhibitions

The course The Making of Exhibitions is based on acquiring practical tools used by architects on a daily basis (for example model making, reading plans, producing simple graphic representations, using specific vocabulary) in order to understand space, and in particular exhibition spaces (e.g. private galleries, museums, or non-traditional locations). The course is intended for anybody with an interest in exhibition making (artists, curators, architects, historians, designers, critics, etc).

The learning of those tools is a pretext to discuss exhibition making (a less inflated term than the word curating) with the students, on both a theoretical and a practical level (from concept via graphic design and scenography to press-release). The participants learn to produce simple models in which they implement their own projects for potential exhibitions. During that stage of the workshop the students are free to deal with their own interest so that, at the end, a variety of exhibitions (solo or group show, contemporary art, applied art, biographical or historical) is being developed and shared within the group.

The workshop was held since 2015 in several summer courses (Autocenter Summer Academy Berlin, Bauhaus Bernau Summer School), in art schools (Oslo National Academy of the Arts) and in art centers and museums (Yarat, Baku and Kasteev Museum, Almaty). It lasts about five days: two days to acquire the basic notions and produce blank models, three days to develop an exhibition within the model and a final public presentation of the results. It’s usually accompanied by lectures on my own practice, where I share my view on the making of exhibitions, and screenings of films relating to art.

At the end of the course the participants should have a more profound understanding and awareness of space and exhibitions as a specific field within art.