🗓️Wednesday, March 2, 2011
6:30pm – 10:00
with a performance at 9:00PM
FRANTS SPACE GALLERY
📍81 Wooster St, 4th fl, New York, NY 10012 USA
📧 rsvp@frantsgallery.com
The opening reception Exhibition of Works by: Alexandra Dementieva and mikhael a crest sator ArXeNeKrOHeN, with a Performance by Daria Pravda
ST. PETERSBURG ARTS PROJECT IS PROUD TO PRESENT:
A Persistence of Memory
Exhibition of Works by Alexandra Dementieva and mikhael a crest sator ArXeNeKrOHeN with a Performance by Daria Pravda
In Alexandra Dementieva installation, Mirror’s Memory, a viewer is confronted with a “magic” looking glass; where, besides his own reflection, he sees images of other visitors who came by the mirror before him. An interactive “magic carpet” memorizes the viewers presence, and then generates their images in random groups. This is a “remembrance of things past” – persons passed before this mirror, that are now stored in the memory of this installation.
mikhael a crest sator ArXeNeKrOHeN presents a series of objects collectively entitled as Cause of Memories 153. Most of them are variations of his famous Bragophone ; the alchemic apparatus that transforms yeast into light and sound, in addition to the intoxication liquid. Even though alcohol is often associated with “drinking to forget”, the artist here uses it to explore all the aspects of memory – from its causes, to total oblivion. In some cases the spirit in the Bragophone takes a viewer to the spiritual realm and becomes a “remembrance of things future”, like a possible dialogue with Sol LeWitt.
Yet, not everything in this exhibition is “soak and mirrors”. The bragophones are serviced by a captivating handmaiden – the performance artist Daria Pravda – who is dressed in a fashion that is reminiscent of the erotic scene of the prewar Vienna. Her presence might cause some fascinating memories of our own.
Text by Irina Barskova
Art Historian