Statue of Limitation

Statue of Limitation

Exhibition Dates: 18 November 2013 – 4 January 2014
Opening Reception: 18 November 2013, 6 - 9 pm

Green Art Gallery Dubai announces “Statue of Limitation” presenting works by Nazgol Ansarinia, Holger Niehaus, Judith Sönnicken and Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck with Media Farzin.

“Let us not be deceived,” Bernard Baruch announced in 1947, “we are today in the midst of a cold war.” The walls may have come down over two decades ago, but there are numerous symptoms of Cold War antagonisms and unresolved issues in today’s political landscape: global powers attempting to colonize the world intellectually as well as economically, then resorting to concealed or overt violence where the propaganda machine is ineffective.

“Statute of limitations” is a legal term, describing the time frame during which affected parties can take action to seek justice after injury or damage. There is no time limit for seeking justice for large-scale international crimes — financial, technological, or cultural colonization, systemic corruption, invasions, war profiteering, war crimes, state- sponsored terrorism and assassinations, or cyber wars. Yet these are the very crimes that, despite clear evidence of their damage, remain unacknowledged, normalized by social and political systems which condone them.

In the face of such systemic violence, this exhibition offers a statue of limitations: an anti-monument to human will, with all its limitations.

Nazgol Ansarinia’s work rebels against state logic and bureaucracy. Her operations take up official documents (NSS Book Series), as well as quotidian objects (Mendings), which become host to human anxieties and uneasiness about the times we live in.

The subjects of Holger Niehaus’s photographs are symbolic abstractions: a vanitas of oil and water, the motivations behind many a political and economical maneuver; a still life version of Kasmir Malevich’s Black Square of 1915 (A48), a radical avant-garde gesture overshadowed by the subsequent trajectory of Soviet socialism but still one of the most influential artworks of the twentieth century.

Judith Sönnicken’s anti-monuments suggest the recurrence of uneasy events.
One is an image of a paradox (Statue of Limitation): a human-size empty pedestal — a claim to represent the act of limiting? The other gives physicality to the digital (Back Up), speaking to the anxiety of losing the digital tools that enable so many facets of our everyday life, and perhaps presaging a lost age ended by advanced digital, or nuclear, weapons.

Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck and Media Farzin take a 1950s-era US television program about current politics as the source material of their video (Chronoscope, 1951, 11 pm). By selectively reordering its conversations, the statements of various interviewees are weaved into a single dialogue. The result is a disquieting snapshot of early Cold War discourse and its resonances in the present day.

Notes to Editors:

Born in 1979 in Tehran, Nazgol Ansarinia graduated from the London College of Communication in 2001 before taking a Master of Fine Arts at the California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco in 2003.

Select exhibitions include: Longing Persia, Exchange and reception of art in Persia and Europe in the 17th Century & Contemporary Art from Tehran, Museum Rietberg, Zurich (2013); Safar/Voyage at The Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver (2013); When Attitudes Became Form Become Attitudes at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts and the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (2012, 2013); A Permanent Record For Future Investigation, Green Art Gallery, Dubai (2012) and Interior Renovations, Tehran, 2010, Green Cardamom, London (2011). Nazgol Ansarinia took part in the 10th & 12th Istanbul Biennial and was a recipient of the 2009 Abraaj Capital Art Prize. She lives and works in Tehran, Iran.

Holger Niehaus was born in 1975 in Nordhorn, Germany and studied at the AKI – Academie voor beeldende Kunst en Vormgeving in Enschede, The Netherlands. His work has been shown in multiple solo and group exhibits in Amsterdam, Utrecht, Santiago de Compostela, Hamburg and Berlin amongst others, He had his first museum show in the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague, The Netherland in 2010.

Born in 1981 in Germany, Judith Sönnicken graduated with a Master of Fine Arts at the University of the Arts in Berlin in 2010. Since 2005 she has exhibited internationally in solo and group exhibitions including the Autocenter Berlin, Art Center Los Angeles, Bourouina Gallery Berlin, Lisi Hämmerle Gallery Bregenz, Museo Geológico de Portugal, Neuer Pfaffenhofener Kunstverein, Spinnerei Leipzig and Klondike Institute of Art and Culture in Dawson City, Canada. She lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck was born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1972. Recent solo exhibitions include “Cultural Diplomacy: An Art We Neglect” at Galerie Martin Janda, Vienna, Austria; “Modern Entanglements”, Henrique Faria Fine Art, New York, NY, “Corrupted Files” at Galeria Luisa Strina, Sao Paulo, Brazil; and “A little bit of heaven” at Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, Cambridge.

He has been included in numerous group exhibitions including most recently: “Liquid Assets, in the Aftermath of the Transformation of Capital”, Steirischer Herbst (2013), Graz, Austria, “Order, Chaos, and the Space between: Contemporary Latin American Art from the Diane and Bruce Halle Collection”, Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, (2013); “When Attitudes Became Form Become Attitudes”, CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco (2012); “Artist on the News”, Creative Time, New York (2012); “Liberalis”, Lütze-Museum and Galerie der Stadt Sindelfingen (2011); 12th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul (2011); “Then & Now: Abstraction in Latin American art, 1950 to Present”, Deutsche Bank, New York (2010); “Panorama”, Museu de Arte Moderna de Sao Paulo (2009). He lives and works in Berlin.

Media Farzin (born 1979, San Diego) is a New York-based critic and PhD candidate in art history at the City University of New York, researching language-based U.S. art of the 1970s. She received her BFA in Painting from Tehran University and MA in Curatorial Studies from Columbia University. She is the author of numerous monographic essays on artists, contributor to various art journals, and currently a lecturer at the City College of New York. Her ongoing collaborative project with Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck was most recently exhibited at the Steirischer Herbst in Graz, Austria.

For more information, please contact the gallery at info@gagallery.com or +9714 346 9305.

Green Art Gallery is a contemporary art gallery based in Dubai, UAE. Representing a multi-generational mix of artists, the Gallery's program is focused on contemporary artists from the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, Turkey and beyond, working across different media, traditional and new, who employ a research based approach. Artists represented include Turkish artist Hale Tenger, NY-based Iranian artist Kamrooz Aram and NY-based Palestinian artist Shadi Habib Allah. The gallery has continued to grow and in 2012 added NY-based artist Seher Shah and Venezuelan artist Alessandro Balteo Yazbeck to the artist roster. Green Art Gallery represents artists and presents special collaborative projects.

Green Art Gallery was originally established in 1995 by Mayla Atassi, when it played a key role in the development of major modern Arab artists including Fateh Moudaress and Ismail Fattah, among others. In 2010 and upon the appointment of Yasmin Atassi as gallery director, Green Art Gallery went through a complete rebranding and restructuring of its identity, artist roster and curatorial focus. In 2010, Green Art Gallery relocated to a 3000 sqft warehouse space in AlSerkal Avenue which allowed for the innovative and ambitious projects which were to follow.

In 2012, Green Art Gallery launched its publication program, collaborating with curators, writers, and artists, to expand the reach of its exhibition program beyond “the white cube.” Its first publication, "Brute Ornament", accompanied the exhibition under the same name and featured artists Kamrooz Aram and Seher Shah and was edited by Murtaza Vali with contributions by Media Farzin, Alan Gilbert, and Shumon Basar.

Since 2010, Green Art Gallery has participated in various international and regional art fairs including Art Dubai, Contemporary Istanbul, Moving Image Fair in London. In 2012, Green Art Gallery participated in the Art Statements section of Art Basel and Art Futures in Art Hong Kong.

AL QUOZ 1, STREET 8, ALSERKAL AVENUE, UNIT 28
P.O. BOX 25711 DUBAI, UAE
T: +971 4 346 9305
F: +971 4 346 9306
info@gagallery.com

This release was published on openPR.