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MONOCHROMIA
ALLIANCE 22

27.02.2016– 23.04.2016

Opening 26.02.2016, 7-9 pm
at DIEHL, Niebuhrstrasse 2, 10629 Berlin
and Diehl CUBE, Emser Strasse 43, 10719 Berlin

On View: February 27th 2016 – April 23rd 2016

Tiberiy Szilvashi
Badri Gubianuri
Serge Momot
Constantin Roudeshko
Sergey Popov

For the first time outside of the Ukraine Diehl gallery and Diehl CUBE present the Ukrainian artist group ALLIANCE 22 with an extended double exhibition opening February 26th, 2016. A group of four artists, founded in 2012, that concentrates in its curatorial and other projects exclusively on monochrome and abstract paintings, objects, and on installations.
Originally New Artistic Alliance (later renamed ALLIANCE 22) was founded as a non-profit platform by Badri Gubianuri, Constantin Roudeshko, Tiberiy Szilvashi, and Serge Momot.
Since that time every 22nd of the month another installation of guest artists from around the world opens at the Mikhail Bulgakov Museum in Kiev.
The group considers Ukrainian artists such as Kazimir Malevic, David Burliuk, Alexandr Archipenko, Vladimir Tatlin, Alexandra Exter, Vasyl Yermylov und Alexander Gogomazov as their intellectual and art philosophical forerunners.
In the Ukraine such abstract positions can’t count on any support or interest from an art audience. It is largely owed to the political situation and to the absent structure of the art world in countries like the Ukraine, Belarus but also Russia, that artists like those from ALLIANCE 22 have had to work without any noteworthy attention from galleries, collectors, and institutions for many years and decades.


JULIA NEFEDOVA & LENA VAZHENINA
INTERNET DOESN'T ALLOW ME TO FORGET YOU #BFF

Opening: March 17th 2016, 7–9 pm at
Diehl CUBE, Emser Strasse 43, 10719 Berlin
On View: March 18th 2016 – April 23rd 2016

…. a special kind of exhibition project.
Social media platforms have been facilitating encounters for several years now but I would never have thought that a virtual encounter on Facebook could result in an exhibition and a book but I really rather liked the idea.
When I first saw Julia’s posts on Facebook I knew right away that she was special, and in fact rather more than just different. She was a small, highly charged universe unto herself. She radiated a singular autonomy that grabbed me right away. Initially it was her strange and exotic photographs: Julia in Paris by night, doing a headstand in the middle of the road; Julia as Shiva; or in any number of brazen, provocatively erotic photographs that also managed to tell some sort of funny or weird narrative story. Then there were strange Instagram photos of foodstuff arrangement, or the Barbie dolls in various disturbed states of grim disfigurement. I often wondered whether many of these images were some sort of diary. But I knew for sure that this was someone who had something more to say than all the girls and models who post cats and dogs ad nauseam or spend the greater part of their time in selfieland.
Then she started posting more and more of her drawings all of a sudden. This was when we actually got in touch. Her first drawings were clumsy, but they had promise. I started giving her the odd pointer here and there like a teacher. Our friendship took its course. I was under no illusions; it was more of an experiment than anything. There were no preconceptions. But with every drawing her line and composition became more assured. The stories she tells are contemporary in the best sense of the word; the Zeitgeist of a young woman who, after all, belongs to a completely different generation, though this only added to my curiosity. And then there were the portrait photographs of her friend Lena Vazhenina; photos, drawings, Instagram posts, captions, one-liners…Julia’s world. Women who are though perhaps not always lonesome but ‘alonesome’, dwelling in a world where childish and apparently straightforward realities coexist with the darker sides of the human soul.
The texts in the book come from Aleksandra v. Luxburg – brief snapshots that say a great deal when read in conjunction with the drawings, though they also allow the viewer to construct his own ‘rhymes’ and narratives.
Lena Vazhenina is the perfect pendant and counterpart in this artists’ alliance. Her precise, disciplinarian arrangements transpose Julia into an array of feminine roles that interact quite brilliantly with the drawings. Lena’s affectionate, sympathetic eye creates a world in which the two artists complement each other perfectly through beauty, transformation, lasciviousness, eroticism, play and an infallible sense of timing.

Volker Diehl

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DIEHL, Niebuhrstrasse 2, 10629 Berlin
+49 30 22 48 79 22
[email protected]
www.galerievolkerdiehl.com

DIEHL CUBE, Emser Strasse 43, 10719 Berlin
+49 30 54 82 28 88
[email protected]
www.diehl-cube.com