White Box New-York December 2015 / January 2016

Group Exhibition

Recycling Religion examines the role of religion in Russia and Eastern Europe since the collapse of the Soviet empire. Paradoxically in the modern age, the once repressed and dormant Orthodox Church has evolved in the past quarter century to become an intrinsic and powerful extension of the State, commanding broad influence over life beyond its purely spiritual role.

From art and entertainment to dress code, and numerous other aspects of personal behavior, this essentially anachronistic religion insinuates its moralizing, oppressive influence and rancid style into life at large.

In the case of art, the Church goes to extreme lengths to impose and control popular taste, to the inevitable disgust of a new generation of artists—a stellar and representative group of which is represented in this exhibition—who dare to employ Orthodox imagery and symbolism to undermine the established religious canon and the dystopia it fosters in harness with state power.

To such artists, the Church is but a hollow vessel that sustains itself only with elaborate stage sets and costumes, outdated ritual, and severe moralizing. However, it is their contention that while the regurgitated apparatus of the official Church represents a moribund ideology, it serves also as a foil by which art can transcend tradition and discover the new-within-the-old.

This subterfuge is depicted vividly, and in fact compassionately, in this exhibition, in which, through installation, performance, video, and graphic art, the conservative and radical poles of post-Soviet society are shown to in fact interact. As one allegedly spiritual force engages in tearing the world apart while pretending to mend it, another, more pragmatic, biological force appeals to the need to rebuild society out of the ruins of Orthodoxy, thus recycling religion, rather than eradicating it entirely.

Marat Guelman / Juan Puntes.

Recycling Religion Artists

Pussy Riot, Oleg Kulik, Dmitri Gutov, Iija Soskic,Jelena Tomasevic, Recycle Group, Alexander Kosolapov, Duke Riley + Mac Premo, Federico Solmi, Robert Priseman, ANVIL Collective, Electroboutique,Vladimir Kozin, Pavel Brat, Arsen Savadov

Recycling Religion is supported in part by Dukley European Art Community, Martin C. Liu and WhiteBox board members

The programs of WhiteBox are made possible in part by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council for the Arts

Special thanks to Postmasters Gallery, Richard Taittinger Gallery, and Magnan Metz GallerySpecial thanks to media sponsor artnet

link

WhiteBox | New York presents in collaboration with Dukley Art Center | Montenegro / December 2016

Location: Deauville Parking Garage | 6625 Indian Creek Drive Miami Beach, FL
Recycling Religion, curated by Juan Puntes and Marat Guelman, is a group exhibition, installation, new media and performance by a radical group of Eastern European Artists and select Western counterparts.

As the post Soviet Block countries have been shedding their eight decades’ long Communist ideology, the element of Faith has replaced it. In a paradoxical, unwarranted mode, the once dormant Orthodox Church has become an intrinsic part of ‘The State,’ overseeing all aspects of life well beyond the spiritual. From dress code, to art and entertainment, to life and love at large, religion attempts to impose upon the people it’s old moral, oppressive behavior and rancid style… little escapes it. In doing so, what may have once been spiritual about the Church has now become a dead-end victim of activating past anachronisms upon a present future.

The exhibition-project Recycling Religion leans more on the actual act of ‘Recycling’ than on ‘Religion’ per se. Ironically, the underlying topic of this diverse, striking multi-media art and performance proposal is the gauging contemporary artists’ use of the shell of “dead ideologies.” Susceptible to the frailty of the traditional artist, a simple twist of fate becomes prey to the ‘New’ even though ‘de novo’ may have its origins in the ‘Old’.

The curators purposefully selected this dystopic theme as a reflection of the present-day world, inviting a select, radical milieu of contemporary artists to comment upon, through installation, video, performance and new technologies, two forces. One force engages in tearing the world apart while pretending to mend life, the other, emulating our physical biology, bringing forth the need for reconstruction from the ‘spent’. The works these terrific, singular artists come up with will thrill any and all contemporary art public.

Artists List

Pussy Riot, Pavel Brat, Alexander Kosolapov, Alex Melamid, Electroboutique, Robert Priseman, Vladimir Kozin, Dmitry Gutov, Jusuf Hadžifejzović, Arsen Savadov, Ilija Šoškić, Anatoly Osmolovsky, Jelena Tomasevic and Andriy Bazyuta

*More artists to be announced

Link