NIKA
NEELOVA
Monuments
Private View | First
Thursday
Thursday April 7th
6.30pm–8.30pm
Kindly sponsored by Windhoek
Lager
Exhibition
Dates
Friday April 8th – Saturday April 30th
2011
Gallery Hours
Wednesday–Saturday 11am–6pm
or by
appointment
Address
336 Old St, 2nd Floor, London, EC1V
9DR
Contact
+44 (0)20 7739 4055
direct@charliesmithlondon.com
www.charliesmithlondon.com
CHARLIE SMITH london is
delighted to present the Russian born and 2010 winner of the Saatchi Gallery and
Channel 4’s New Sensations Nika Neelova with her debut London one person
exhibition.
Neelova’s sculptural
installation engages with personal, collective and adopted histories. Narrated
through the evocation of remembered architectural spaces, houses and features
that she has occupied or seen, Neelova’s installations and sculptural
interventions depict decaying architectural structures inspired by spaces that
once existed. Fragments of these spaces are rebuilt from materials salvaged from
elsewhere, thereby negotiating a new space between actual and unknown histories.
In doing so Neelova’s work is emblematic of both and becomes a cultural and
historical displacement, also acknowledging the transience and persistence of
time.
The notion of time is
central to Neelova’s work. In emphasising the concept of the ruin, newly made
objects that have undergone intensive work at the hands of the artist come to
signify decay, destruction and loss. The reliance on memory also explores its
failure, where distortion and fragmentation replace the actual and complete.
Neelova therefore constructs a complex set of correlations between the
remembered, the forgotten, the actual and the ephemeral where these fractured
indices take form in monumental, haunting, melancholy
objects.
In this exhibition Neelova
will present three new works. Using wax cast from salvaged antique Dutch
banisters with ash and dark patina pigments, a spiral staircase will occupy the
back room. In doing so the skeletal object is rendered fragile and
dysfunctional, climbing only to the ceiling which now impedes rather than
protects. Referring to funerary rituals in post-Reformation England, Neelova
will also present a series of flags. Embedded with illusive charcoal dust
patterns, they allude rather than dictate to notions of identity and of the
commemorative. And in the main gallery Neelova’s third piece, made from
salvaged timber and cast wax elements, will directly reference the
architectural. Distantly suggesting rail tracks it is a de-contextualised,
structural work that intimates a path or route, but which is again impeded by
its own constitution. Hanging cast ropes bring forth notions of the hangman’s
gallows, which originally built as a replacement for the crucifix, symbolise
judicial power as articulated throughout the centuries.
Please contact gallery for
images and further information
