ikono is proud to collaborate with this year's Marrakech Biennale. For the inaugural week from February 29th to March 5th, 2012, we are showcasing a special playlist on our Menasa channel - dedicated to the rich artistic practice and heritage of the region. As an example, we are presenting here on arte Creative the work of French-Moroccan artist Chourouk Hriech.

ikonoTV showcases a vast selection of films - on art works from all times and of all styles. See here an example of a recently featured film on Alexandre Farto aka VHILS's work "Scratching the Surface". 

On 25 June 2011, the Ministry of Culture and Communication will unveil Imi Knoebel's six stained-glass panes.  The artist was commissioned to create them for the apse of the Notre-Dame de Reims, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the cathedral where French kings were once crowned.

Imi Knoebel was born in 1940 and is known for his abstract and minimalist paintings and sculptures.  His oeuvre explores the relationship between space, form and colour. The regional direction of Champage-Ardenne cultural affairs has undertaken the long-term restoration of the cathedral and commissioned six stained-glass windows from the artist.

Knoebel's work covers a surface of 128m² and is an abstract composition based on the primary colours of blue, yellow and red, which overlap and are superposed.  According to the Ministry of Culture's communiqué, the glass panes represent the artist's translation of the iconography of ancient stained-glass windows into a new abstract language.

The inauguration of the glass panes took place during the 800-year anniversary celebrations of the cathedral. Knoebel's design features on both sides of the glass panes created by Marc Chagall in 1974.

For ikono, guest curator Charlotte Cotton chose the works of California based artist Owen Kydd. Cotton is the creative director of Media Space, a partnership between the Science Museum and the National Media Museum, UK that will open in London in 2012. Previously, she was the head of the Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, head of programming at The Photographers' Gallery and curator of photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. She is the author of the best selling The Photograph as Contemporary Art and the founder of Wordswithoutpictures.org 

For ikonoTV, she chose the Californian video artist Owen Kydd, who bridges the two worlds of photography and video. He uses a photo-documentary style, but with subjects that move only slightly. Presently his practice consists of making these durational photographs. The artist says about his work: "If there is a potential of video for genre or historical picture making, then the form itself, which is a visual duration, should intervene with the photo-documentary subject. Video may have the potential to both record and disrupt the still image - to introduce elements of the unknown to photography"

The Foundation Querini Stampalia was founded in 1869 by the will of John Conte, the last descendant of the family of Venetian patrician Querini Stampalia. It is the only example where, of an ancient family, they preserved heritage, home, library, archives, collections of art, furniture and furnishings. The sixteenth century palace, located between Rialto and San Marco, houses a library, civic center and historical museum. The ground floor and garden were redesigned by Carlo Scarpa in the early 60s. Recently Mario Botta has designed the new access, bookshop and cafeteria. The Foundation organizes exhibitions, conferences, meetings, seminars and collaborations with organizations and companies.

As an example of the foundation's impressive art collection, ikonoTV presents Giovanni Bellini's masterpiece Presentation at the Temple from ca. 1469.

The dating of the work is uncertain, though it is usually considered to be subsequent to the Presentation at the Temple by Andrea Mantegna (c. 1455), from which Bellini took a very similar placement of the figures.

The commission of the two works is unknown. It is sometimes suggested, portrayed members of the Mantegna and Bellini families. The main characters in Bellini's work are the Virgin holding the Child, and the bearded figure of Simeon coming towards them.