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Maria Agureeva
Residency:
August 1 – September 29, 2018

Maria Agureeva
The dust of Perl will settle down on soft skin covering all the cracks
Atrium Gallery

September 10- October 26, 2018
Exhibition reception Tuesday, October 16, 6-8 pm
*This event has been postponed from September 29 to October 16.

Moscow-based visiting artist Maria Agureeva presents an exhibition of new works organized around her multi-channel film installation, The Dust (2018), a work that intentionally erases border lines between documentary and performance, and synthesizes the key methods the artist uses in her larger body of work. The nearly hour-long film depicts Agureeva portraying either a worker or an artist in the workshop, who demonstrates a scrupulous process of making a piece of art and perfecting it. First, she makes a gypsum mould of her own knee, then she casts it in pink plastic, and then she starts its fervent and obsessive grinding with a special device. The ritualized dramaturgy is accompanied by a minimalistic drumming soundtrack.

The colored dust that remains after the sculpture grinds away is pure matter that the audience sees not only on the screen, virtually, but also physically on shelves placed in the gallery. This dust refers to the cycle of life, reminding viewers that “all come from dust, and to dust all return.” Starting from her own state of embodiment, the artist asks us to comprehend the impersonal universal matter that makes up us all, that isn’t bound by any mundane features, but on the contrary, is free and perennially regenerating. A series of sculptures will accompany the film, providing contrast to the dematerialized form.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

In her work, Russian artist Maria Agureeva explores how the body becomes a hybrid space where the materiality of flesh is connected with an individual consciousness and identity. It is driven by the desire to change ourselves to escape social pressure, but also by the desire to find our true shape. This bodily practice focus on the tension between what is considered normal and subjective in relation to the human body: she is interested in exploration of the boundaries behind which the body becomes an object like any other. Agureeva usually works with synthetic materials as a means to stress the point that body transformation is a kind of self design which has become a modern form of religion.

Agureeva graduated from the St. Petersburg State University of Technology and Design (Department of Graphic Design, 2003 – 2009), ICA ( Institute of Contemporary Art, Moscow) (2014-2015). The artist works with installations, objects, videos, performances, sculpture. She is a participant of IX international film festival Andrey Tarkovsky “The Mirror”, Ivanovo (2015) and a nominee of Kandinsky Prize (2013).

Maria Agureeva’s residency and exhibition is generously funded by the Trust for Mutual Understanding.

 

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Videos from Maria Agureeva

"Dust" by Maria Agureeva

"It’s possible to imagine what will remain after" by Maria Agureeva

"Binary promises" by Maria Agureeva 2015

Press Contact
SUE BELL YANK
Director of Communications & Outreach
(310) 453-3711 x104
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