The Russian collective AES+F exhibits once again through galeria SENDA: “Mare Mediterraneum“, after passing through the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, Italy in 2018 –an official event at the same time as the Manifesta art fair– and its follow-up exhibition at Trafalgar, 32, in 2019. This time, we present a single show for this edition of The Armory Show in New York, from September 9 to 11, 2022 at the Javits Center.

 

Press release (excerpt):

The Mediterranean Sea is the reserve of civilization: its heart has pumped people, cultures and religions from one coast to another like blood. The Phoenicians and the Carthaginians expanded to the north, the Romans and the Crusades to the south, the Genoese to the east, the Byzantine empire to the west, the Islamic caliphate to the east, west, north, and south. Sicily is right in the middle and the storm waves of all civilizations have splashed on its shores. This is still happening today.

The Mediterranean Sea is once again the epicenter of the ideological contradiction. The war has pushed refugees and migrants who, to save themselves, have had to swim and survive to face Europe with a difficult choice. (In ancient mythology, Europe was also forced to cross this sea.) His election has led to political and ideological clashes, the polarization of public opinion and the rise of xenophobia and ethnic violence.

This tragic situation has become a political conflict, as well as an issue of negotiation and ideological speculation. In this way, it has been transmitted by the media as a concept defined today as “post-truth”. The ethical situation that has developed is paradoxical.

Working with porcelain figures in this theme could be considered an extreme manifestation of this paradox, from a distance an artistic image can be more radical than reality itself because it can push conceptual boundaries.

Porcelain has always been a symbol of satisfaction and bourgeois comfort. The recent waves of migration have confronted Europe with a dilemma: whether to accept the refugees, allowing them to enter at the expense of the material and psychological comfort of their hosts; or to reject them in an immoral, inhuman and cynical act that would damage the cooperative ethical basis of Europe itself.

Comfort is fallible and fragile, like the china associated with it. Kept safe for generations in high places, porcelain figurines are carefully guarded but their fragility encapsulates the threat of instant loss. They break easily.

The chosen form and material of these works contrast with the drama of what is unfolding in the Mediterranean today. A reflected ray of light illuminates better than a direct one. We think this bears truth about this work.

 

Edited by David Elliott

 

Follow us on social media & don’t miss any activity or news from the gallery!

Connect with us: @galeriasenda #galeriasenda