Communism Never Happened
November 7th – December 20th, 2009
Vernissage on Saturday November 7th from 18 – 21:00
Ciprian Mureşan, David Levine, Julian Bismuth, Luchezar Boyadjiev,
Lucia Nimkova, Patrick Tuttofuoco, REP Group, Sean Snyder,
Yang Zhenzhong, Anetta Mona Chişa & Lucia Tkáčová
FEINKOST is pleased to present the group exhibition entitled
“Communism Never Happened”. Taking its title from a work by artist
Ciprian Mureşan, the show explores different modes of archiving,
processing, assimilating and forgetting.
Do math equations in your head. In Mureşan’s work the title phrase was
cut from vinyl records of propaganda. This now unconfirmable recording
functions here as a revised text, the original source compromised to
convey new information. Legibility of text and its translation into
raw material is the outcome of Anetta Mona Chişa & Lucia Tkáčová’s
piece “All Periods in Capital” from 2007. The seminal book by Karl
Marx has been filtered through the bean counter, each moment of
punctuation converted into a small handmade black ball, more than
22,000 sentences of commodified ideology. How well ideology works on
paper versus its real-world application underlies Yang Zhenzhong’s
2003 video “Spring Story”, a tale of a two-headed dragon and a unified
workforce.
Keep a diary. Cold storage of celluloid can be the best method for
properly preserving an archive. Sean Snyder’s imagery of where this
methodology has helped to extend our resources for remembering proves
insightful. Re-enactment can stimulate the memory of an experience.
Bodily memory obtained through a routine of regimented exercise is the
starting point for Lucia Nimcova’s video “Exercise” (2007). The
video’s juxtaposition atop a photojournalistic archive of daily
practice helps to fill the gaps between workouts. Enactment
facilitates recalling an event based on projection and the actor’s
ability to evoke the character. A production still from the set of
David Levine’s documentary “Bauerntheater” (2007) depicts the actor
David Barlow endure the manual labor of method acting as he trains to
become a 1950s East German potato farmer.
Draw a map from memory. The sculpture “Neueröffnung” by artist Patrick
Tuttofuoco is a map editorialized according to a psychogeograhical
experience – neighborhoods are layered and reconfigured complete with
ciphers of time and place. “Billboard Heaven” is a continuation of
Luchezar Boyadjiev’s research into the collapse of public, private and
corporate space within cityscapes. In this body of work Boyadjiev has
sequestered every remaining available space of sky and sidewalk with
commercial excess and sexualized architecture.
Learn a new language. The mirror-like quality of Julian Bismuth’s
floor piece teases the eye with a familiarity of economic structures
by transcending pocket change into an alternative value system. The
analysis of cultural languages and codes has always been at the heart
of the Kiev-based REP Group’s research. Their project “Patriotism”
functions as a progressive iconography, i.e. word pictures
transmitting messages that instruct us on how to navigate contemporary
society. For any questions, images or further information please
contact Aaron Moulton at info@galeriefeinkost.com.