In September Fragment gallery is launching a gallery-sharing initiative called Open Circle. The theme of the first collaborative exhibition, which occupies a whole Fragment gallery space, is 'The New (Sur)Realism'. It reflects, in the best possible way, times we all live in and shows different angles of contemporary artists practice, and strikes a balance between illusory, fictional and real life.
Each participating gallery was invited to become a co-curator of the month-long exhibition and show works by one of its artists. Capsule Shanghai presents a video work by Alice Wang, Lubov from New York - an installation by new media artist Theodore Darst, Raster from Warsaw brings prints by significant Polish artist Aneta Grzeszykowska, Temnikova & Kasela (Tallinn) - works by Jaanus Samma, who presented Estonia at the 56th Venice Biennale, and Fragment gallery shows paintings by Canadian artist of South Korean origin Sun Woo. Special bilingual platform (Rus/Eng) dedicated to Open Circle will be launched on September 16th.
"Despite only half of previously confirmed participant galleries being able to make it to the final show, I'm glad that Open Circle is finally happening in real life. In a time of very limited travelling, postponement of gallery and museum exhibitions, and cancellation of all major art fairs around the world, it's important to show Moscow collectors works of international artists, and show them that life is still going on. We plan to make this project every September, to coincide with Cosmoscow art fair, to give galleries and collectors a chance to experience art from around the world not just for four days, but a whole month. We do hope other galleries from Moscow will join forces with us for future editions to create a strong, visible Russian gallery-sharing platform", said Sergey Guschin, founder of Fragment gallery and Open Circle initiative.
Capsule Shanghai Gallery, Shanghai, China
Established in late 2016, Capsule Shanghai is based in Shanghai's central Xuhui District. Situated on the first floor of a picturesque 1930s garden house in the idyllic greenery of the former French Concession, the gallery works primarily with emerging artists who push the boundaries of contemporary art. The gallery's special focus is on artists who have personally and professionally migrated between regions, creating unique trans-national and trans-regional links.
From its inception, Capsule Shanghai sought to work with artists from China or artists who have established a professional foothold in the country. The gallery continues to work with emerging contemporary artists destined for the international scene, often presenting their work for the first time in China and abroad, such as Alice Wang, Gao Yuan, Leelee Chan, Feng Chen, Huang Hai-Hsin, Sarah Faux, Ivy Haldeman, Maya Kramer, Cai Zebin, Wang Haiyang and Douglas Rieger.
Alice Wang
Alice Wang was born in 1983 in Xi'an. She received a B.Sc. in Computer Science and International Relations from the University of Toronto, BFA from the California Institute of the Arts, and MFA from New York University. She was a fellow at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, a Villa Aurora fellow in Berlin, and the recipient of several major grants from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Wang has presented solo exhibitions at Capsule Shanghai, Visitor Welcome Center, Human Resources, 18th Street Arts Center; participated in group exhibitions, screenings, and performances at the K11 Art Foundation (Hong Kong), Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibition, Armory Center for the Arts (Pasadena), the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Taikang Space (Beijing), FLAX Foundation, the Hammer Museum; and presented talks at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing), Chronus Art Center (Shanghai), and Shanghai Project.
She is an assistant professor of arts at New York University Shanghai, and co-organizes The Magic Hour, an outdoor exhibition platform in the Mojave Desert in California. Wang is based between Los Angeles and Shanghai.
Wang is attracted to properties like heat, scent and circulating around the room air, thus her art is often called alchemical.
At the gallery-sharing initiative's exhibition we display artist's video work «Pyramids and Parabolas I» - thoughts on geometry and architecture as ways of communication with extraterrestrial civilizations. In her work shots from the "Contact" with Jodie Foster are side by side with the chronicle of the Chelyabinsk meteorite fall.
As the artist claims: «When I make anything, I usually don't start with a solid idea, but with curiosities or inklings. Almost like searching in the dark».
Lubov Gallery, New York, USA
Lubov is a contemporary art gallery established in 2016 that supports the production and exhibition of new work by emerging artists through commissions and solo exhibitions working collaboratively with writers and curators.
Reviews of the gallery have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Artforum, V Magazine, Office Magazine, The Village Voice, Art in America, Bedford & Bowery, Art F City and many other leading publications.
Theodore Darst
Theodore Darst (b. 1986) is an artist living and working in Manhattan.The artist specializes exclusively in new media. He creates flashing 3D graphics and imagery that blurs the line between virtual and real worlds. Darst believes that irony is integral to contemporary art.
Darst's work has been included in The 2016 Artists' Film Biennial at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, and group exhibitions at The Drawing Center, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, The Museum of the Moving Image, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.
Recent exhibitions include Scenes of the American Landscape at Team Gallery, Annihilation Holiday, with Kate Steciw, Roxbury Liberal Arts, False Flag at Franklin Street Works, Last Days in a Lovely Place, Lubov, New York, NY (solo), Not Every Place You Fit In Is Where You Belong, with Collin Leitch, Kings Leap, Cult Trash, Magenta Plains, New York, NY (solo).
At the gallery-sharing initiative's exhibition Lubov gallery presents artist's installation «LifeDance», a 27-minute recording that summarizes the entire video art created by the artist in 2018-2020.
Raster Gallery, Warsaw, Poland
Raster Gallery is among the pioneers and leaders of the Central European contemporary art market, and one of the most recognizable galleries from Poland. The gallery cooperates with the most significant institutions and collections, taking part in major art fairs, while striving to support and develop Warsaw's local art scene. Raster also publishes art editions and other publications, along with contributing to local and international cooperation platforms between galleries. For 20 years Raster has consistently been presenting the most original artists from Poland and the world.
Raster Gallery participates in such major art fairs such as Art Basel (in Basel, Miami and Hong Kong), Frieze, Fiac, LISTE and Art Dubai.
Aneta Grzeszykowska
Aneta Grzeszykowska lives and works in Warsaw. The primary medium in which Aneta Grzeszykowska works is photography. However, she treats it instrumentally, as a tool for the realization of advanced, artistic and ontological exercises. The artist is interested in the role photography plays in creating and documenting a personal identity. Therefore, in her film projects or doll sculptures, the human figure acquires the shape and aura of a marionette. One of the main topics of Grzeszykowska's works is her own identity, with which she plays on many levels: by erasing her own figure from a family collection of photographs (Album, 2005), or by impersonating Cindy Sherman in her classic cycle Untitled Film Stills (2006). Some projects by Grzeszykowska - like the cycle of illusionist portraits of non-existent people (Untitled, 2006) - take advantage of the possibilities offered by digital image manipulation, while others use photography and film in a classic way by emphasizing the performative dimension of the artist's activities. The motifs which she obsessively returns to in her works are absence, invisibility, disappearing, and the confrontation of body and thought with non-existence.
Aneta Grzeszykowska's works are held in the collections of Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), Henry Art Gallery (Seattle), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Miami Art Museum, Rubell Family Collection, Miami Centre Pompidou, Paris, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Goetz Collection, Munich Art Collection Telekom, Bonn Verbund Sammlung (Wien), Museum of Modern Art (Warsaw).
Aneta's prints from the «Negative Book» series are exhibited at our gallery.
According to the artist: «it is a cycle of photographs, but it's obvious for me that it is a performance as well. What can be seen in the gallery is a result of that performance… For me the sense of the work lies in the clash between the absurd act and the final effect. My works are tragedies and comedies at the same time».
Temnikova & Kasela gallery, Tallinn, Estonia
Temnikova & Kasela gallery was established in 2010 by Olga Temnikova, an artist and graphic designer with previous experience as a gallery director, and Indrek Kasela, a creative entrepreneur, philanthropist, cinema owner and film producer. The gallery provides local and international professional representation for established and emerging artists from the region including Estonia, Latvia, Finland and Russia. For the past 10 years, Temnikova & Kasela has been presenting a regular exhibition programme in its Tallinn space, working closely with artists and collectors, and playing an active role in regional and international art scenes. International projects shown at the gallery include group shows "Narcotics" (2020), "Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation" (2018), "Euroland" (2017) and "International Fun" (2016), and exhibitions by artists including Oleg Frolov, Tobias Kaspar, Gili Tal, Sophie Jung, Mike Levitt, Dan Mitchell, Josephine Pryde, Merlin Carpenter and Georgie Nettell. Alongside providing a platform for an international dialogue in Tallinn, Temnikova & Kasela gallery is committed to supporting its artists' activities abroad, building relationships with art professionals outside of Estonia, and participating in art fairs. The gallery has previously shown at Art Basel Fair, The Armory Show, Cosmoscow, LISTE Art Fair, Paris Internationale, NADA Miami Beach and Frieze, among others.
Jaanus Samma
Jaanus Samma (b. 1982) is a renowned artist based in Tallinn. He studied at the Estonian Academy of the Arts, Tallinn. In 2013, he was awarded the Köler Prize by the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia. In 2015, he represented Estonia at the 56th Venice Biennale with his project "NSFW. A Chairman's Tale". His works include photographs, installations and videos centred around the study of urban space and our subjective experiences of it. Over the years, Samma's interests and research have become focused on gender studies and representation of male sexuality. Investigating how these issues can be discussed and portrayed in art, he combines fieldwork - interviews and archival research - with subjective artistic practice based on his findings.
At the exhibition you can see the artist's work from the series «Pieces of Antiquity». The installation encourages us to think about how censorship, politics and chance influence the hierarchy of history formation. Pieces of classical sculptures, once hidden away, are now put on full view.
Fragment Gallery, Moscow, Russia
Fragment gallery is a Moscow-based contemporary art gallery, focused on promoting artists regardless of their age, gender, nationality or race. Artistic practice of most of them ties around issues of the modern world, from social and economic to political. Fragment gallery was founded in December 2016. Overall in its first three years the gallery made more than 25 projects. Exhibitions and fair participation of the gallery is regularly featured in international press, such as The Art Newspaper, Artforum, ARTNews, Financial Times, Forbes etc. In addition to exhibition activities, the gallery regularly hosts an educational program (lectures, master classes and artist talks). Each year the gallery runs international open calls for artists and curators.
Sun Woo
Sun Woo is a promising canadian artist of korean descent. At the age of ten, Sun Woo moved with her family to Canada. She studied visual arts at Columbia University in New York and after getting her bachelor's degree the artist decided to return back to Seoul.
Artist explores the world of fetish items, the ways in which they get circulated and consumed both physically and on the internet, and what that reveals about our contemporary desires and anxieties. Sun Woo creates collages of images, she focused on items that she found emblematic of the latest fad like some fashion things or gaming, Karaoke and K-pop. Creating her artworks Sun Woo tried to answer the questions: what do these goods speak about the desires, and perhaps deficiencies of today's society? What part of ourselves are we trying to fill by actively consuming them?