The first offline exhibition in the framework of CYFEST-13, the International Media Art Festival, this year taking place in New York, Moscow, and St. Petersburg, will open at GROUND Solyanka Moscow on the 12th of July 2021 and will run until the 22nd of August 2021. The exhibition «Two Things» is organized with the Marina Gisich Gallery and features audio-visual installations by Vladimir Rannev and Marina Alekseeva.
The final project of the CYFEST-13 will take place in St. Petersburg in November 2021.
The audio-visual installation «THE WHOLE SHEBANG»
Marina Alekseeva has always been interested in the social structures of contemporary society, which the artist has explored through the prism of the physical and material environment of human habitation. A new joint project with Vladimir Rannev reflects back on a series of Alekseeva’s lightboxes from the 2000s that recreated miniature versions of the interiors of various religious buildings, from a cathedral to a mosque and an Orthodox church. The subject under examination in the total installation «The Whole Shebang» is the main temple of the modern human — their home, filled to the brim with devices and gadgets.
At first glance, it may seem that the content of Marina Alekseeva and Vladimir Rannev’s project is limited to environmental issues, which are an important focus of the contemporary art scene. As you first approach it, «All Inclusive» really does look like a call to consider the consequences of household waste, an anti-manifesto against overproduction and consumerist society. Technology, designed to facilitate and improve everyday life, has taken on such a large role that it is gradually displacing humans, excluding us as irrelevant and turning into a closed, autonomous ecosystem. At the beginning of the XXI century, we are predicting the imminent rise of the machines, without realizing that in fact it has already happened long ago.
The «The Whole Shebang» project was conceived a little more than a year ago, in a completely different reality, as they say. It was the year 2020 and the time of lockdown when humanity was actually locked in at home, and space and time collapsed into the experience of domestic life. It filled the work of Marina Alekseeva and Vladimir Rannev with new overtones that made it existential and even tragic.
«The flesh of the installation is formed by a technique that visually creates the impression of mad technogenic bustle, the “demonic life”. The audio is an ecstatic “symphony of comfort”. Before us is an army battered by struggles with consumer greed.» — Vladimir Rannev
The audio-visual installation «WE CAN DO IT AGAIN»
«All wars start with people being prepared to fight, and by making them prepared with militarist slogans, hate propaganda and manipulation of their insecurities and fears. This means that wars do not start with gunshots, but with words. The audio-visual installation “We can do it again” is our reaction to the rhetoric of hostility that is prevalent in the Russian media space, and which we find utterly abhorrent.» — V. Rannev, M. Alexeeva
MARINA ALEXEEVA – renowned Russian artist who works with video and multimedia, winner of numerous prizes in the field of contemporary art and scenography, whose works are held at prestigious collections around the world: from the Multimedia Art Museum to the private collection of Sir Elton John and David Furnish.
VLADIMIR RANNEV – composer, graduate of the St. Petersburg Conservatory and the Cologne University of Music, winner of numerous Russian and international prizes. His music has been performed in Russia, Austria, the UK, Germany, the USA, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Japan, Poland, France and Ukraine. Sheet music of his works are published by Donemus (the Netherlands).
SAVE THE DATE: 12th of July to the 22nd of August 2021
GROUND Solyanka Gallery
Mon-Sun, 12:00-22:00
T: +7 (495) 6216332
1/2, bldg.2, Solyanka str.,
Moscow, Russia, 109028
(entrance from Zabelina str.)