Aluminium - 3rd International Biennale of Contemporary Art

3-5 December 2007 - The Aluminium III Biennale of Contemporary Art was held in Baku. Painters from 19 countries participated in this International Biennale (from Canada, France, Georgia, Germany, Great Britain, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, Korea, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, the USA and Uzbekistan).

Contemporary forms of art were presented at the Biennale: performance, video-art, photographs, installations and also traditional forms of art: sculpture and painting.

Two exhibitions were displayed on each of three days. Expositions were organized in the central museums and galleries of Baku: the Shirvanshahs’ Palace, the Museum Centre, the Contemporary Arts Centre and the “Absheron”, “Baku” and “New Gallery” galleries.

This festival, organized by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Azerbaijani Republic, served to develop and support contemporary forms of art. The principal sponsor of the festival was AZERCELL TELECOM and other sponsors were: the Ministry of Youth and Sport, AZEL, the Grand Hotel Europe, the NATAVAN Business Centre and SEBA (Seoul-Baku) the Azerbaijan-Korean Cultural Exchange Association. A special organisational role was played by the embassies of the USA, France, Italy, Sweden and Russia to Azerbaijan.

Partners: the “Wings of Time” Association for the Support of Creative Initiatives, the Union of Artists, the Contemporary Arts Centre, the Museum Centre, the Shirvanshahs’ Palace Complex, the “Absheron” gallery, the S. Bakhlulzade Central Exhibition Hall, the “Baku” Art Gallery, the “New Gallery” gallery and the Azerbaijan State Art Gallery.

The subject of the festival was the “Realities of Dreams”.

Throughout history, human beings have striven to look beyond this world in order to see what is behind its reality. Ancient rituals, antique mysteries, magical ceremonies and the appearance of religious belief originated in the desperate desire of man to understand the transcendental world.

Almost all modern culture has been inspired by Sigmund Freud’s discoveries and his theories of psychoanalysis. Carl Jung stated that art plays the same role in society that dreams do in human life. The best products of culture which have left their traces in generational memory have the character of dreams. This is why they seem to be inexhaustible. They are eternal to the senses, just as the secret of a dream is infinite. The jump into the world of dreams is the artist’s answer to the challenges of a rationalist and soulless civilization. Man becomes the creator of his own mythology in a dream. Only in a dream is he free of the ties and restrictions of empirical reality.

Let us look around and try to understand what is happening in the modern world and ask ourselves: is there a basic difference between dream and reality? And is our wakefulness only one version of a dream…Or not?