Into the Future
dal 14/6/2006 al 28/7/2006
Segnalato da
14/6/2006
Into the Future
Plus Ultra Gallery, New York
Gulnara Kasmalieva and Muratbek Djumaliev. Collaborating for many years, the husband-wife artists are renowned for their documentary-style video installations and photography exploring the ramifications of political upheaval and modernization. They exhibit a video and a selection of photographs.
Gulnara Kasmalieva and Muratbek Djumaliev
Plus Ultra Gallery is extremely pleased to present Into the
Future, the first New York solo exhibition by Kyrgyz artists Gulnara Kasmalieva and
Muratbek Djumaliev. Collaborating for many years, the husband-wife artists are
renowned for their documentary-style video installations and photography exploring
the ramifications of political upheaval and modernization.
Working in their hometown of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, which has been the center of
change and protest since the collapse of the Soviet Union and recent overthrow of
the widely criticized administration of former Kyrgyz president, Askar Akayev,
Kasmalieva and Djumaliev exhibit here their 2005 dual-channel video installation
“Into the Future." Filmed in Siberia, “Into the Future" offers a direct and
thoughtful verification of the effects of change and transformation.
Through the juxtaposition of slowly changing images of industrial wastelands and the
matter-of-fact recording of people boarding a ferry, they offer a complex,
non-ironic look into that ambiguous point at which the future becomes the present
and how we cope with that.
In addition, Kasmalieva and Djumaliev present a selection of photographs from their
“New Menhirs" series. Referencing the giant stone structures (or “menhirs")
that jut out of the ground, marking prehistoric burial grounds, throughout Central
Asia, this series catalogs desolate, often destroyed landscapes of factories and
their surroundings. Standing, like menhirs, as monuments to a lost epoch, the
ghostly structures in these images symbolize the contemporary stagnation that has
replaced the brighter future they once promised.
Gulnara Kasmalieva and Muratbek Djumaliev’s work has been exhibited extensively
around the world, including in the Central Asian Pavilion at the 51st Venice
Biennale; the OK Centre for Contemporary Art for ‘Biennale Cuvee’ in Linz,
Austria; the Ujazdowski Castle Contemporary art Centre in Warsaw, Poland; and the
Sydney Mishkin gallery in New York. Their work will also be included in the upcoming
Singapore Biennale which opens in September 2006.
This exhibition was made possible through the generous assistance of Murat Orozobekov.
Opening Reception: Thurs. Jun 15, 6-8 pm
Plus Ultra Gallery
637 West 27th Street, Suite A - New York
Hours: Tuesday thru Saturday, 11am to 6pm or by appointment