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Januar 2022

NON-VERBAL STORIES. Lentov Exhibition

By /NEWS/
NON-VERBAL STORIES. Lentov Exhibition

Speak not, lie hidden, and conceal
the way you dream, the things you feel.
Deep in your spirit let them rise
akin to stars in crystal skies
that set before the night is blurred:
delight in them and speak no word.
Fyodor Tyutchev, «Silentium!» ( translated by Vladimir Nabokov)

ARTIST: LENTOV/ELENA FUKS
CURATED BY: IRINA RUSINOVICH
LOCATION: Bulowstrasse 11, 10789, Berlin
EXHIBITION DURATION: 14.01.2022 – 05.02.2022
VERNISSAGE: 13.01.2022 AT 7P.M.

In program structuralism’s essay by Roland Barthes, The Death of the Author, a philosopher research phenomenon transforms author’s ideas in the reader’s minds into something different. How does it happen? How does our personal experience influences our text’s interpretation and understanding? Why is author’s idea isn’t the same thing as the reader’s interpretation? According to Barthes when the reader sees the text, and starts reading it, interpreting it, the author is dying, because his idea is transforming and never will be the same.
In visual arts, as in texts, the same process is happening. We see an artwork, and our imagination, life experiences, education  help us to understand visual forms. It’s a unique, unrepeatable understanding for everyone.
The solo show of the artist Lentov Non-verbal Stories is about an essential trait of art — an ability to make a viewer feel and reflect. It is the first time Lentov presents abstract artworks and introduces the audience to the new phase of her artistic career.
„The abstract era of my oeuvre started two years ago. I wanted to share something personal, not in any verbal ways, to allow you to read my diary that was written without using any words“.
Abstract art is more delicate in the case of „storytelling.“ This art style is not so straight, but it conveys mood and emotions much more accurately and gives a broader field for imagination and reflection. Each artwork is a personal story of the artist and each viewer, and all these stories are entirely different.
Artworks at the exhibition are made in different techniques and on various materials. The main artwork of the exhibition is a 3,9 x 2,6 m diptych that was never shown before.

LENTOV

Lentov is the pseudonym of an artist, illustrator, painter, designer, and graphic designer, Elena Fuks.
Elena was born in 1993 in Moscow. She was educated in British Higher School of Arts & Design, Istituto Europeo di Design Barcelona.
She started her artistic career in 2009. Today the painter lives and works in Barcelona.
For now, Elena has had  six personal exhibitions and participated in sixteen group exhibitions, including the exhibitions in London, Barcelona, Moscow, Lisbon, Cologne, Berlin, and Venice.

ESPRITS Christian Boltanski at Manege

By /NEWS/

Animitas Blanc (Animitas White), installation view, Ile d’Orléans, Québec, Canada, 2017 

ESPRITS Christian Boltanski at Manege

15 March–15 May 2022

Manege Central Exhibition Hall (St. Petersburg) presents Russia’s first-ever solo exhibition by French art legend Christian Boltanski.

This project is made possible with support from the Institut Français in Russia in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the signing of the agreement on cultural cooperation between the Russian Federation and the French Republic.

Christian Boltanski (1944–2021) was one of contemporary art’s most outstanding and influential figures. Esprits is one of the last exhibitions to which Boltanski had personally contributed.

Christian Boltanski, Monumenta 2010, Grand Palais, Paris   

Boltanski himself selected those of his works from the past 10 to 15 years – large installations, video artworks, and art objects – to be exhibited at Manege. Some of his new pieces will be on public display for the first time: he created them as he reflected on events from Russian history and attempted to immerse himself in them more fully.

Boltanski’s project concept offers insights into subjects he has always accorded paramount importance: loss, memories, existential choices, fate, and personal and collective history. After the artist’s death, the team kept continued work on the project, using the materials, blueprints, and thoughts Christian left behind.

Personnes (Persons/Nobodies), exhibition view „Storage Memory“ at Power Station of Art, Shanghai, 2018

“I wish I could find some word connected with ghosts. But one that is tied to the idea of a return from the land of the dead rather than any particular place.”

From Christian Boltanski’s letter to Andrei Erofeev

“The pandemic has brought about a frightening but very curious phenomenon. Remember how we used to deny the very notion of death prior to the COVID era? Well, now we speak of death as something that is all around and a part of our reality.”

Christian Boltanski’s interview for Marian Goodman Gallery

Moved, 2013, exhibition view „Storage Memory“ at Power Station of Art, Shanghai, 2018  

When ruminating on a project at Manage, Christian mentioned that the concept of the St. Petersburg exhibition should be connected with Bloody Sunday. According to his notes, he was thinking about souls of insurgent workers wandering around the Manege space, waiting to be dispatched to Heaven or Hell.

For Christian, Manege was a symbolic place, saturated with history. The Dioscuri statues on the portico reminded him of an Ancient Greek myth. The brothers Castor and Polydeuces, sons of Zeus, were great heroes. Polydeuces was endowed with immortality by his father, while Castor was mortal. Not wishing to part with his brother, Polydeuces shared his immortality with Castor, but for this he was condemned to wander between Olympus and Hades with his brother for all eternity.

Personnes (Persons/Nobodies), exhibition view „Almas“ at Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile, 2014

The exhibition Esprits is organized by Manege in collaboration with Eva Albarran & Co (Eva Albarran & Co).