12 Apr - 30 Apr 16
Elturan Mammadov (B. 1990, Azerbaijan)
Shepherd’s Dream, 2016
Print on fabric, 200 x 150 cm
It is confirmed by the most scientists that childhood memory is the strongest and the most moving part of memory. The words said, games played, poems learnt in childhood are the most memorable and are deeply ingrained into one’s subconscious. Sometimes children with developed imagination reanimate everything in their memory and live with these memories. Shepherd’s Dream is the favorite poem of young photogapher Elturan Mammadov, which he used to visualize as a child.
Shepherd’s Dream, 2016
Print on synthetic fabric, 200 x 150 cm
The Dream of Shepherd installation was inspired by a custom of people in mountainous regions of Azerbaijan who sleep with blankets during summertime. One morning the artist woke up in Oghuz region and saw that the green blanket resembled the view of Great Caucasus Mountains and decided to work on this idea. The installation also references shepherds’ favorite pastime of playing pan flute and contemplating nature, while taking their herd grazing.
PapaBaba, 2016
Installation. Soviet bed, tie, two two-channel videos
The installation Papa Baba revolves around Russo– Turkish relations and how these two powerful countries impact on the social and cultural lives of Azerbaijan. The artist prefers to ironically show his attitude towards these influences and social problems by producing a body of work with political undertones that investigates these relations from 1990s up to present day. The installation consists of two silent videos and two sound videos and visual illustration of a word that means two different things in Turkish and Russian.
Gvantsa Jishkariani
(B. 1991, Georgia)
‘Counterfeit goods’ is a term used to refer to fake items that are made to look like genuine consumer goods. Gvantsa Jishkariani adopts the terminology for her show that muses on the confluence of artificially enforced cultural signifiers and popular aesthetic preferences in Azerbaijan. The titles of the works in the show are taken from the Simpsons animated sitcom that deals with American everyday life and its attitude towards fake value system with subtle irony. The artist sees this fixation with mass culture and sarcastic take on it as very close to her own practice and hence, presents a body of work with similar ironic undertones.
You’ll release the dogs, or the bees, or the dogs with bees in their mouths, and when they bark, they shoot bees at you?, 2016
Installation. Glass tubes, leave teas, pigment, fabric flowers, lightbox
You’ll release the dogs, or the bees, or the dogs with bees in their mouths, and when they bark, they shoot bees at you? The artist superimposes fake and natural materials and creates unlikely combinations and systems of dependencies to confuse what is real and what is made to mimic the reality. In that way she echoes the context that is fascinated with simulation, fake flowers, stuffed animals and leopard print patterns.
Maybe there is no moral. Maybe it's just a bunch of stuff that happened, 2016
Installation. Polyethelene film, camel-shaped enamel jewelry box
In Maybe there is no moral. Maybe it's just a bunch of stuff that happened the polyethylene film creates a landscape that serves as a metaphor for the futuristic vision of a city. It is allusively see-through, but sterile, artificial and suffocating material, which seems to predict the future of a city that has its parks set in stone. Nonetheless, as the title suggests, it might be just a polyethylene film with a camel.
Fastrelax, 2016
Video installation
Screen, chair, metal chains, 3 minute video
Video installation Fastrelax runs standard footage of nature that is supposedly used for relaxation. However, the footage is fast-forwarded and the installation is constructed so that one is being placed too close to the screen, so that it becomes nearly impossible to register the material. The installation offers a social commentary that suggests that it might be impossible to analyze situations and call things their names when put too close, when being part of them.
Vajiko Chachkhiani (B. 1985, Georgia)
The Last Thing I Can Hold on to are your Kind Words by Vajiko Chachkhiani presents artist’s poetic narration on cinematic space of absence and presence. Similar to the space of Artim, that used to be a family house and is still filled with residue of previous lodgers, the show is infiltrated with allusions of lives once lived and objects once used. The title itself is taken from an artwork that is absent from the show; only a name remains as a register of its existence.
We Drive Far, You in Front, 2016
Video, 3 minutes
In the video We Drive Far, You in Front unprocessed seven-tone basalt stones fall on top of each other, which at times break. The footage is filmed twenty times slower than real time. The artist constructs a dissonant scenario where an image, heavy with physicality serves as a metaphor for the fragility of human psyche. These raw basalt stones, fresh off the quarry, are later processed to be employed in architecture. The interiors and exteriors adorned by these stones will be dwelled with families, individuals, where human unprocessed and processed dramas will take place.
Both Ends, Shadows and Mirrors, 2016
Green pigment, dimensions variable
Both Ends, Shadows and Mirrors is a pigment trace on the floor; with a distinct rhythm it recalls certain choreography and a presence that is now missing. The work is actually a relic of non-public performance that took place before the opening of the show. Chachkhiani collaborated with an old man living in an elderly home, who sat for artist while he scattered pigment over the person. The pigment was generated from a scraped off fence, which artist collected in an abandoned village in Georgia.
But ah, My Foes, and oh, My Friends, 2016
Wax candle, 15 x 2 cm
But ah, My Foes, and oh, My Friends is a phrase taken from a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Vajiko Chachkhiani attempts to translate the poem in performative installation. Millay’s poignant poem is about a fast, hazardous and exciting lifestyle invoked by unyielding curiosity for life that nevertheless, is short because of its impractical exuberance. Chachkhiani’s sculpture, however, is about the impossibility of translating the essence of poetry, and the new essence that is formed out of that attempt.
Luke Burton (B. 1989, UK)
Crude Developments for Fountain Studies, 2016
HD video, 14 minutes
Luke Burton’s video art titled “Raw Projects for Fountain Explorations” indicates newly constructed neoclassical fountains of Baku which are presented in almost all squares and parks of the city. These fountains are the symbol of modern urban development and constantly changing landscape of Baku.
One of the artist’s main preoccupations is the study of problems of using local decorative elements in contemporary art. This characteristic factor is manifested in Burton’s “Raw Projects for Fountain Explorations” video art. This video explores the historical models of the city, as well as the ways of using decorations in urban environment for determining the identification form of the city. He researches an archetypal nature of certain architectural motifs, repeated for years, preserving one type of form, and cultural condition that allows this specific repetition.
Global changes happening in social and cultural spheres of the modern world. Urban space, being a specific society that combines different subcultures, acts as a concentration point of socio-cultural transformation and as a representative of these processes. The semiotic approach to urban space is based on "city - the carrier and transformer of cultural information" postulate.
Urban space is not only about the change of physical environment, it also points out the change of information sources and transition to a new cultural environment.
Zamir Suleymanov (B. 1987, Azerbaijan)
Pride, 2016
6 plastic lumber planes, each 2 x 3 m
For his series Pride Zamir Suleymanov was inspired by vandalized public toilets around Azerbaijan. These recently-renovated toilets are usually finished with plastic lumber planes which are conveniently cheap and easy to clean; however, also it’s easy to leave a mark on them too. Often people burn these out to write their names, telephone numbers, their hometowns and other things that are of importance for them or ‘give pride to them’ as the artist characterizes these inscriptions. Zamir nods to this phenomenon and borrows the technique and materials to produce a survey of the prevailing preoccupations of modern Azerbaijani society. Suleymanov’s huge plastic lumber planes have seemingly innocuous, yet highly contested symbols on them that refer to defining moments in history of Azerbaijan. For this series Suleymanov uses simple outlines similar to Gobustan petroglyphs to muse on the urge of humanity to leave a physical mark and claim their presence since time immemorial to present day.
Heavy Words, 2016
Three-channel video, 4 minutes
Zamir Suleymanov’s show Heavy Words presents artist’s investigations into socio-cultural reality of his native Azerbaijan and attempts to integrate vernacular practices into art.
The projections of a three-channel video Heavy Words each depict a truck with stone blocks driving around the town. These trucks have the stones positioned so that they make up words, which is not a rare sight, since often in time for New Year celebration the drivers assemble dates of the upcoming year with these stones. However, lorries in Suleymanov’s video read ‘art’, ‘God’ and ‘sex’. These words, indeed heavy in their implications and in their contested and ever-changing meaning throughout history, are eternally relevant to every locality. But in Azerbaijan it is almost banned to talk about sex and God and there is a very little discussion around art. This holy trinity of three-lettered English words cruises around the town in Western-influenced boldness, almost urging for a confrontation.