COSMOSCOW Art Fair 2020

a-s-t-r-a x COSMOSCOW Art Fair

10 - 13 SEPT 2020

OKSANA MAS, ALINA BLIUMIS, JOLIE ALIEN

booth Е3

PAVEL BUSHUEV

bopth Z36 "Moscow "

Gostinii dvor, Ilinka 4

Transcription of modernity

Time and the processes taking place with people right now are lived by them in parallel and, it would seem, at the same time, but they open up facets different from the general perception to visionaries - those who are able to read abstractions of new trends and non-verbalized meanings of the approaching universal present.

The a-s-t-r-a gallery stand at the 8th Cosmoscow fair presents the work of three women artists: three views of modernity; three dimensions of a single canvas of universal history; three different optics; multi-layered imprint of today in a triptych of thought.

Oksana Mas is an artist, humanist, philosopher living and working in Spain. In the new series of works "Memory Files", created during the quarantine, she explores in the context of the latest discoveries of neuroaesthetics, the peculiarities of the structure of collective and individual memory. Revealing changes in the prints that a person leaves and that remain in him, as a result of certain events, the artist plunges the viewer into the labyrinth of reactions and the infinity of alternative paths of the past. The multi-layered work, the reflection of the observer looking in the lacquered surface, as in the pupils of the observer conducting the experiment, the response at the level of the retina and neural reactions to color, composition, innuendo and open structure, are involved in the process in which everyone lives their own unique experience.

Alina Bliumis - born in Minsk, Belarus, since 1993 has been living and working in New York. Alina reflects on this physical, political and socio-cultural journey in her work. Throughout her practice, the artist is constantly researching the formation of national identity, its historical and geographical roots and its ambitions in global geopolitics. Using communication as a means par excellence, her projects raise questions about what constitutes a community, what constitutes boundaries, and how the former is shaped by the latter. Most importantly, the artist stresses that language itself can function as a border, as a paradigm of power, and can be used to shape a community.
In her new series, “Masses”, which premiered at the Spring / Break Art Show in New York in March 2020, the artist explores the sociology of the crowd, the process of interaction between the individual and the collective. The masses have always historically been a symbol of change, regardless of the direction of such change - revolutionary, social or cultural. The artist raises the question: participation in mass action is the disintegration of the personal, the rejection of the sense of one's own in the face of the all-embracing common, or the struggle for one's own idea, the right to be heard and the right to speak on one's own behalf.
In her works from the series “Amateur Bird watching at Passport Control”, which are also presented, Alina reflects on globalisation as a global circulation of information, money, goods, people and viruses. It uses images of birds that serve as symbols of various national states and for this reason ended up on the official documents of its citizens (passports), and frees them from national symbols, giving them the opportunity to soar freely, without knowing borders and without taking into account this or that context.

Jolie Alien is an eighteen-year-old artist living her youth, exploring years and days filled with discoveries: self-awareness, desires, dreams, new people, countries and ideas. She creates works on the back of the correct “adult” reality, turning the canvas of social attitudes, norms and restrictions to the other side, and builds her own map of meanings, manifesting herself and a specific moment of being. The expressive drawing and collage nature of the compositions of her paintings may at first glance seem discrete, but this informs the works of all the familiar, but difficult to perceptible property of lightness, freshness and the feeling that a little more and it will be possible to get off the ground, thereby distinguishing them from many others. In her work, there is a closeness to the traditions of the "art of gesture" and to individual works by ar informal. Jolie's art is a statement about oneself and fixation of the surrounding reality in the form of a lasting impression.

Pavel Bushuev's works will be presented separately at stand Z36 of the Moscow section from the "Deformation" series. "Deformation (from Lat. Deformatio -" distortion ") is a change in the relative position of body particles associated with their movement relative to each other. This series present the deep deformations occurring inside a person pass through us, distorting the cognitive shell. Deformation is the fixation of these sensations."

Alina Bliumis

Alina Bliumis is New York-based artist. Alina received her BFA from the School of Visual Art in 1999 and a diploma from the Advanced Course in Visual Arts in Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Como, Italy in 2005. Alina often collaborates with Jeff Bliumis, their collaboration started in 2000.

Alina has exhibited internationally at the Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration, Paris, France, the First Moscow Biennales of Contemporary Art (Moscow, Russia), Busan Biennale (Busan, South Korea), Assab One (Milan, Italy), the Bronx Museum of the Arts (New York, US), Galerie Anne de Villepoix (Paris, France), Centre d’art Contemporain (Meymac, France), the James Gallery, The Graduate Center CUNY (New York, US), Museum of Contemporary Art (Cleveland, US), Museums of Bat Yam (Bat-Yam, Israel), the Jewish Museum (New York, US), the Saatchi Gallery (London, UK), Botanique Museum (Brussels, Belgium), the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, UK), MAC VAL - Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne (France).

Her works are in various private and public collections, including MAC VAL - Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne, France; Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration, Paris, France; The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK; Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Russia; Bat Yam Museum for Contemporary Art, Israel; The Saatchi Collection, UK; The Harvard Business School, USA; The National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadelphia, USA and Missoni Collection, Italy.

SOLO PROJECTS AND EXHIBITIONS

2020 - A Painting For A Family Dinner, with Jeff Bliumis, Tokyo Biennale, Japan
2020 - (Upcoming) Narrating Against the Grain, Kunstihoone, Tallinn, Estonia; with Tanja Muravskaja, curator Corina L. Apostol
2020 - (Upcoming) Drawing Now, Galerie Anne de Villepoix, Paris, France
2020 - (Upcoming) Masses, Spring/Break Art Show, New York, USA; curator Elizabeth M Grady
2019 - Classification Patterns: Christian, Muhammad, Lee, “Y” Gallery of Contemporary Art, Minsk, Belarus; curator Irena Popiashvili
2019 - On the Land of Eagles, Galerie Anne de Villepoix, Paris, France
2019 - Poems without Borders, Project Statement, Parallel, Vienna, Austria Nations Unleashed, Spring/Break Art Show, New York, USA; curator Ksenia Nouril
2018 - Political Animals, Aperto Raum, Berlin, Germany
2018 - Political Animals, Aperto Room, St.Petersburg, Russia
2018 - Amateur Bird Watching at Passport Control, Pushkin House, London, UK; curator Elena Zaytseva
2018 - Cultural Tips For New Americans Under Trump, Spring/Break Art Show, New York, USA; curator Ksenia M. Soboleva
2016 - Cultural Tips For New Americans, Popiashvili Gvaberidze Window Project, Tbilisi, Georgia
2016 - Recent Works, Bushel, Delhi, NY, US
2014 - Thank You Paintings Exchange, Denny Gallery, New York, USA
2014 - Casual Conversations, The Laurie M. Tisch Gallery, New York, USA
2013 - Which country is the best to move to? Galerie Anne de Villepoix, Paris, France
2013 - A Painting For A Family Dinner / Lecce, Italy, Ammirato Culture House (ACH), Lecce, Italy
2013 - A Painting For A Family Dinner / Beijing, China, Inside-Out Art Museum Artist-in - Residency, Beijing, China
2012 - Cultural Tips Takeaway, Toomer Labzda Gallery, New York, New York
2012 - Language Barrier and Other Obstacles, Peacock Visual Arts, Center For Contemporary Art, Aberdeen, UK
2012 - A Painting For A Family Dinner / Bronx, NoLongerEmpty, documentation at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, USA
2012 - Casual Conversations, National Museum of American Jewish History, Philadelphia, USA
2011 - Cultural Tips For New Americans, NoLongerEmpty, Ideas City Festival - New Museum, New York, USA
2011 - Global Reach Inc. Andrea Meislin Gallery, New York, USA
2010 - Cultural Tips For New Americans, Stanislas Bourgain Galerie, Paris, France
2009 - Casual Conversations in Brooklyn, Black and White Project Space, Brooklyn, New York, USA
2008 - A Painting For A Family Dinner / Bat Yam, Israel, Bat Yam Museum for Contemporary Art, Israel.
2008 - Dam Lines, Andrea Meislin Gallery, New York, USA (catalog)
2008 - Language Barrier / Lower Manhattan, public art project, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York, USA
2008 - Language Barrier–Yellow Pages, Stanislas Bourgain Galerie, Paris, France
2008 - Hello, USA? Contemporary City Foundation, Moscow, Russia (catalog); curator Andrei Parshikov
2008 - Language Barrier, Pulse, New York, USA
2005 - Cloning Factory, MuseumsQuartier, Vienna, Austria

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2019 - Persona Grata, MAC VAL, Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne, France; curator Anne-Laure Flacelière and Isabelle Renard Cosmopolitics, Comradeship, and the Commons, Suoja/Shelter festival, Helsinki, Finland, curators Corina L. Apostol, Ksenia Yurkova and Anastasia Vepreva.
2018 - Persona Grata, Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration, Paris, France, curator Anne-Laure Flacelière and Isabelle Renard
2018 - Project Statement, Parallel Vienna; curator Maria Kalinina
2018 - PRO____BEL, Belarussian Art Abroad, Villa Sokrates Foundation, Krynki, Poland; curator Andrei Dureika
2018 - Babble, Gallery CA Baltimore, MD, US; curator Yuzhuo Mark Zhang
2017 - Ernst, Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center, Yekaterinburg, Russia
2017 - Amateur Bird Watching At Passport Control, Popiashvili Gvaberidze Window Project, Viennacontemporary, Vienna, Austria
2016 - Now to remember the future is not possible?, Fest I Nova, Garikula, Georgia, curator Nutsa Chikvaidze
2016 - The Lives of Forms, Lower East Side Printshop, New York, USA; curator Ksenia Nouril
2016 - Making Continuity Contemporary: Eastern Europe in New York, Derfner Judaica Museum, Bronx, NY
2016 - The Bronx Speaks Our Home, Andrew Freedman Home, Bronx, NY; curator Sarah Corona
2015 - DEAD: A Celebration Of Mortality, Saatchi Gallery, London, UK
2015 - Specters of Communism: Contemporary Russian Art, James Gallery, CUNY Graduate Center, NY, USA; curator Boris Groys
2014 - NASS BELGICA L’immigration marocaine en Belgique, Botanique Museum, Brussels, Belgium
2014 - Time::Code, Whitebox Art Center, New York, USA
2013 - Unhinged, Pierogi Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, USA
2012 - This Side of Paradise, NoLongerEmpty, Andrew Freedman Home, Bronx, New York, USA
2012 - Foreign Bodies, Barbur, Jerusalem, Israel; curator Yevgeniya Baras
2012 - Generation One and a Half, Abrazo Interno Gallery, New York, USA; curator Yulia Tikhonova
2012 - Civil Disobedience Festival, De Balie Centre for Culture and Politics, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; curator Tania Volkova
2012 - Foreign Bodies, Set Gallery, Brooklyn, New York, USA; curator Yevgeniya Baras
2011 - Media Impact. International Festival Of Activist Art, the Fourth Moscow Biennale, Russia (catalog); curator Tania Volkova
2011 - About Face, NoLongerEmpty, Festival of Ideas for a New City, New Museum New York, USA
2011 - Electrica, Instituto Cervantes, New York, USA
2010 - New Acquisition, The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK
2010 - Artistes russes: Un art au superlatif, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Meymac, France
2010 - Now We Are Six, Andrea Meislin Gallery, New York, USA
2009 - American Dream / Be Happy, Pulse Miami Installation Program, USA
2009 - Frozen Reality, Holster Projects, London, UK
2009 - No Longer Empty, Chelsea Hotel, New York, USA
2009 - The Situation, Third Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia (catalog); curator Elizabeth M. Grady
2009 - Ultra-New Materiality, Third Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia (catalog); curator Andrey Parshikov
2008 - Moby Hosting, Bat-Yam Museum, Bat-Yam, Israel (catalog); curators Milana Gitzin-Adiram and Leah Abir
2008 - Off The Wall: Artists At Work, Jewish Museum, New York, USA; curator Andrew Ingall
2008 - Moscow - New York = Parallel Play, Chelsea Art Museum, New York, USA
2008 - A Matter of Time, Andrea Meislin Gallery, New York, USA
2007 - MOCA Mix film, Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, USA
2007 - Left Pop, Second Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Russia (catalog); curators Diana Baldon, Georgina Jackson, Nicola Lees
2007 - Media Image and Unconscious, the Second Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia
2007 - Victory Over The Sun, National Center of Contemporary Arts, Moscow, Russia (catalog); curator Vitaly Patsukov
2006 - Making Love to My Ego, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, England
2006 - Refuge, Busan Biennale, Busan, South Korea (catalog); curator Yun Cheagab
2006 - Out Of Paint, Kuhn Gallery, Ohio State University, Marion, USA
2006 - Unauthorized Access, Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
2006 - Aesthetics of Resistance, Assab One, Milan, Italy (catalog); curator Roberto Pinto
2006 - Contested Spaces in Post-Soviet Art, Sidney Mishkin Gallery, New York, USA; curator Elena Sorokina
2006 - Korperchen, Veranstalter Medienwerkstatt, Vienna, Austria
2005 - Russia Redux #1, Schroeder Romero Gallery, New York, USA;; curator Elena Sorokina
2005 - Aesthetics of Resistance, Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Como, Italy (catalog); curator Roberto Pinto
2005 - Post-Diasporas: Voyages and Missions, the First Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, Russia (catalog); curator Olga Kopenkina
2004 - Symbols of The Big Bang, Santa Fe Art Institute, Santa Fe, USA

RESIDENCIES

2013 Ammirato Culture House, Lecce, Italy
2013 Inside-Out Art Museum (IOAM), Beijing, China
2009 Black and White Project Space, Brooklyn, New York, US
2005 Quartier 21, MuseumsQuartier, Vienna, Austria

GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS

2016 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, New York, US
2014 Genesis Grant, Genesis Philanthropy Group, New York, US
2011 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, New York, US
2011 Blue Print Fellowship, New York, US
2010-2011 Franklin Furnace Fund, New York, US
2009 Trust for Mutual Understanding, New York, US
2008 Art in Public Spaces Grant, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York, US
2008 Strategic Opportunity Stipend, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York, US
2008 Puffin Foundation Grant, Teaneck, US
2007-2009 Six Points Fellowship, New York, US
2005 Trust for Mutual Understanding, New York, US

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

MAC VAL - Musée d’art contemporain du Val-de-Marne, France
Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration, Paris, France
The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK
Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Russia
Bat Yam Museum for Contemporary Art, Israel
The Saatchi Collection, UK
The Harvard Business School, USA
Missoni Collection, Italy

SERIES "MASSES"

The series Masses (2019-2020), by Alina Bliumis is an exploration into the tipping point, where analysis becomes obsession and participation becomes dissolution, as the individual relinquishes a sense of self in the face of phenomenological overwhelm. At 58 x 83” the cotton panels that comprise the series depict crowds of over-life-size figures representing internal and external encroachment on the psyche. To pass between and among the monochrome gossamer hangings, which combine digital print and watercolor, is to revisit each time you’ve experienced that transcendent moment of fear or ecstasy where the only certainty is that you’ve given up your personal agency to the mob.

Masses #1 is perhaps the most anomalous of the series, focusing as it does on an internal struggle. Evoking the howling forces of worry and self-doubt that visit in the blackness of the small hours of the morning, the work suggests a descent into a demon-plagued hell of our own devise. Monstrously twisted and disembodied limbs vie with attenuated spectral faces for command of the poor soul, bent over at the base of the composition, and gazing apprehensively over its shoulder at the reigning chaos. As riveting as it is disturbing, it is Fuseli’s Nightmare for our troubled times.

On a lighter note, Bliumis turns to mass celebrations of Dionysian excess in the rock concert depicted in Masses #2. The main figure is blissed-out and spread-eagled in mid-stage-dive. The darker side of the experience is intimated by the blackened eye sockets and inverted pose of the figure, however, and we are left to question whether the stage-diver’s act is a celebration of music and communal experience or a kind of temporary martyrdom, where consciousness is sacrificed through the use of drugs for release from the pressures of this mortal coil. The veiled reference to St. Peter, who as legend has it asked to be crucified head-down so as not to risk dilution of the memory of Christ’s torture, cannot be lost on anyone familiar with the Western tradition.

Front-page news often records crowd hysteria, and the palette of Bliumis’ series reinforces the newspaper reference in works like #7-8 and #5 which depict a Protest and Soldiers respectively. In the former, there are as many emotions as faces, showing the rage, fervor, anxiety, devotion and hope that can forge a compelling collective identity at mass demonstrations. Yet one is left to wonder, given the multiplicity of expressions, if these protestors will every achieve a unity of communal purpose. The soldiers, in their uniformity, are a stark reminder that in rigid discipline and conformity comes another kind of excess that can be wielded as a blunt and unforgiving weapon against a mass of individuals.

Abandonment of reason is a theme that carries through several of these panels, not least in the Masses #3 (Lovers). Here, bodies entwine in the abandonment of an orgy, with the ebb and flow of momentary sensations evoked by shifts in scale, as in the couple at center right; or the union of body parts, like the heads at the bottom center, whose mouths unite when the tongue of the head on the right becomes the lips of the head on the left, in a perceptual twist that would have made Cezanne proud.

The installation of the works, as large fabric panels dividing the space, will create a disorienting experience for viewers, ideally a psychological state that hints at if not approximates the loss of self experienced when one becomes part of a crowd or mass, whether for good or for ill, ecstasy or violence. Bliumis depicts scenes where mass experience tips over into mass hysteria, where the intellect is overcome by emotional input. What differentiates a rally from a revolution? A riot from a rock concert? Whether attending a military exercise, a religious rite or an orgy, overload provides release through collective identification with a larger purpose.

Text by Elizabeth M. Grady

SERIES "AMATEUR ORNITOLOGY ON PASSPORT CONTROL"

The series “Amateur Birdwatching at Passport Control” is dedicated to birds depicted on the covers of passports from around the world.

From eagles to pigeons, from Albania to Tonga, this series explores the intersection of nation and nature. Birds are often part of the national hereditary symbol system or coat of arms and appear on passport covers with metallic gold. On 43 passport covers, I noticed 50 birds or related creatures.

In the works, I isolated each bird from its national symbolic context and painted it according to the source, focusing on the characteristics of the species: the famous one-legged pose of a flamingo (Bahamas), a gliding vulture (Mali), an extinct flightless dodo (Mauritius) and a mythological creature half woman and half bird, Harpy (Liechtenstein). Some birds were easy to identify, some required research using different birdwatching sources, discussion with friends and experts.

I created each bird on a copper plate, etched and printed in one copy, the result is “Amateur Birdwatching at Passport Control”, album, 2016-2017, series of 43 works, relief etching on paper, 12 x 9 inches.

Then I scanned the unique prints and printed them on fabric: Amateur Birdwatching at Passport Control, 2018, 43 series, digital print on silk paper, 44 x 54 inches each, Vol. 3.

Special edition for a-s-t-r-a gallery of 11 works, digital printing on paper, 30 x 40 cm each.

Alina Blumis

What do the birds dream about?

When we speak about globalization we mostly mean the global circulation of information, money and commodities. However, long before this circulation started animals, birds and insects were circulating around the world – and they still are. Migration of birds and animals preceded the migration of men. At the same time not all the animals migrate. Some of them are local – and parts of local ecologies. That is why migration of animals and other living organisms, such as viruses and microbes, is seen as dangerous for the ecological balance in certain regions. Now, the analogy with the human migration is obvious. Often enough it is also seen as a negative factor destroying the ecological balance of certain national states.

Alina Bliumis came to the USA from Belarus. One of the persistent topics of her art is a reflection on the processes of accommodation and integration in which everyone with a similar background is unavoidably involved. The tone of this reflection is far from being dictated by personal ressentiment or protest. Rather, her attention is drawn by the absurdities of the processes themselves. Her recent projects “Amateur Bird Watching at Passport Control” and “Political Animals” deal with the images of animals and birds that serve as symbols for different national states and thus put on the official documents, including passports, of their citizens. There is this standard expression: free as a bird. Speaking about the freedom of birds we mean, of course, the migrating birds that high in the sky cross all the national borders – the freedom which the planes, for example, do not have.

However, the birds which images we find in our passports are not migrating birds. Mostly, they are birds of prey – like eagles, for example. In this respect they are similar to the political animals – lions or bears. The eagles do not migrate – they are circling in the air and controlling their territory. They are machines of surveillance. They look for a prey – and catch it. So it is clear enough why so many states have chosen the eagle as its symbol. Of course, there are also some more peaceful examples. But the common characteristic of all these birds is the fact that they are local – be it a pelican from Barbados or a parrot from Dominica. All these birds are prisoners of their territories. Do they ever dream to become free, to migrate, to visit different countries – and not only to draw always the same circles over the same territory? We do not know it. But if the birds have these dreams it is the citizens of the states that have images of these birds in their passports who realize these dreams – at least in symbolic terms. Thus, even if a parrot remains on Dominica and a pelican - on the Barbados the passports with their images have a chance to be checked at the airports all around the world. Whatever can be said about the migrants one thing is sure: they realize their birds’ dream of flying.

Text by Boris Groys