Cross-Side Crystal Hybrid Orbital
HVW8 Gallery Berlin is pleased to present cross-side crystal; hybrid orbital, a group exhibition curated by Irene Carbonari exploring experimental forces around the idea of the ‘hybrid’. Bringing together the works of eleven contemporary artists from Germany, France, Ukraine, Bulgaria and Russia, the show evokes notions of merging the human, the machine, and the natural organism. The varied presence of hybrid forms in the works are embedded within the complexities and nuances of lived experiences, creating visual odes to the eternal mutability of expression.
In cross-side crystal; hybrid orbital, the works straddle multiple states or slip away from direct categorization, and are characterized by the merging of mediums, including digital, light and sculptural installations, paintings, ceramics, and augmented reality. The works reveal the destruction and reckoning to come from the rise and proliferation of networks and connections within our material world, and the human drive for production and so-called progress.
Text by Miriam Wierzchoslawka
Featuring work by:
Emma Adler
Olya Bazilevich
Kristina Bekker
Julia Eichler
Sebastian Gumpinger
Vikenti Komitski
L’Enfant
Anna Nezhaya
Victoria Pidust
Thomias Radin
Masha Silchenko
View full Exhibition on Artsy: https://www.artsy.net/show/hvw8-art-plus-design-gallery-cross-side-crystal-hybrid-orbital
Reserve online to visit the Exhibition in person: https://www.eventbrite.de/e/cross-side-crystal-hybrid-orbital-tickets-138480339423 (Max 2 persons per 30 minute time slot)
THE ARTISTS
EMMA ADLER, born in Besch and based in Berlin, studied Fine Arts in Saarbrücken and at the Academy of Arts Weissensee. Her projects revolve around the thematic complex of ‘the fake’. She provokes habitual viewing patterns and questions supposed certainties about the relationship between reality and medial representation. Since 2017, the focus of her works has been on conspiracy theories and the related question of different levels of reality. ADLER’s work has been represented by the Arp Museum Rolandseck, Neuer Kunstverein Gießen, Kunsthaus Dahlem and Kunsthalle Bremerhaven. She is the recipient of the Elsa Neumann and the Bernhard Heiliger Fellowship.
OLYA BAZILEVICH, born in Moscow, is currently obtaining her Masters in Visual Communication at the Academy of Arts Weissensee. She makes works that intersect diverse artistic disciplines: 3D graphics, paintings— installations that coexist with graphic design and conceptual thoughts. In her artistic practice, BAZILEVICH mixes classical analogue and modern digital (generative) techniques together, using a computer or mobile phone as an artistic tool. Her Self-Reflection series are images abstractly representative of our communication and interaction driven by gadgets. Despite using the internet and pop culture as her main inspirations, BAZILEVICH communicates complex things in simple terms about the structure of society, materialization and relationships to the world as a whole.
KRISTINA BEKKER was born in Chelyabinsk, Russia, and studied at the British Higher School of Art and Design in Moscow and at the Academy of Arts Weissensee. BEKKER works with silver, ceramics, digital sculptures and augmented reality, to bring ancient traditional crafts to a digital space, and use new technology to rethink them. With her pieces, she is exploring new poetry in relation to the post-digital revolution.
JULIA EICHLER born in Berlin, lives and works in Leipzig, Germany, has developed a molding process in which the surfaces of architectural elements and building materials are reproduced. Using paper machée as her base material, negative duplicates are created in which parts of reality are immanent, since layers of paint and traces of material remain attached in addition to the molded texture. EICHLER has had numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout Germany and in 2018 completed her Masters in Sculpture under Prof. Bruno Raetsch at Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle.
SEBASTIAN GUMPINGER, born in Hannover, Germany, and based in Berlin, received his Masters at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich in 2015, and has since been included in many solo and group exhibitions across Germany and France. GUMPINGER deals extensively with materiality and gesture; steel is treated like paper and seems almost weightless. Light and movement reflect off the bare steel lines and produce three-dimensional illusions. The works act as hybrids of wall objects, picture, engraving, drawing and relief.
In his latest series of works, VIKENTI KOMITSKI, born in Sofia, Bulgaria and based in Berlin, displays the multi-layered surfaces that constitute an image and are usually covered over by the flatness of the picture plane. Against the modernist credo of flatness and purity, these large-scale assemblages, made out of found objects and budget shop items, are deliberately multi-dimensional and impure. The main topics of his work deal with the changing perceptions of nature and the outcome of modernity. KOMITSKI graduated from the National Academy of Art Sofia. He has participated in numerous group and solo shows throughout Europe and the United States.
L’ENFANT is Andre Pereira dos Santos, a contemporary artist born in Faro, Portugal, and raised in Germany. After the pandemic hit, L’ENFANT created this persona to restart his life in Berlin and build his own utopia, following his last group show in London, January of 2020. His art mixes sculpture, photography, painting and digital drawings that explore the unreal world and the culture of science-fiction. Demonsword is made from an uncarved fallen branch L’ENFANT found in the forest just before leaving London.
Berlin based artist from Moscow, ANNA NEZHNAYA explores remaining sacred spaces in contemporary life, diverse spiritual traditions in the West, and their transformations during recent decades. Her main area of interest is space, in a non didactic sense. Her work oscillates between objectivity and abstraction, explores identity in the post Internet age, and interrogates the slippery divide between reality and the virtual.
VICTORIA PIDUST born in Ukraine and based in Berlin, merges her artistic perspectives in photography and painting, allowing for real, abstract and concrete forms of representation in her pictures. In PIDUST’s artistic practice, she uses various imaging techniques—from analog and digital photos to 3D renderings—and combines them. PIDUST is the recipient of the DAAD Study Scholarship (2015-2017) and will graduate in 2021 with her Masters in painting from the Academy of Arts Weissensee while exhibiting in solo and group shows across Germany and Spain.
In THOMIAS RADIN’s works, there is a subtle but present influence of the digital embedded in the surreal and multidimensional aesthetics of his paintings. These digital processes additionally manifest themselves within the artist’s short films and performances, which use music sampling techniques (aka Beya Othmani from digital music production). RADIN graduated from the Fine Arts in Rennes and is based in Berlin. RADIN’s works contain questions and experiences of identity— of the self, of consciousness, and of the mind and body— in the context of societal, political and historical issues.
MASHA SILCHENKO, born in Ukraine, based in Paris, makes paintings and sculptures characterized by patterns that repeat, mix and transform, elucidating myths and nightmares tamed by sensitive interpretation. SILCHENKO has studied at the Tokyo University of the Arts and L’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where she is currently completing her MFA. She has had residencies at Komplot, Brussels and in Atami, Japan and has exhibited at 4649 (Tokyo), Biennale; Odessa (Odessa), Lily Robert (Paris).