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Alina & Jeff Bliumis, Dam Lines Installation, 2008, Bronze, foam, acrylic, ink, wood and fabric | | |
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Alina & Jeff Bliumis
Dam Lines
October 23 – December 20, 2008
Opening Reception
Thursday October 23, 6 – 8 PM
Andrea Meislin Gallery is pleased to present Dam Lines, an exhibition by New York based artists Alina and Jeff Bliumis, originally from the former Soviet Union. An opening reception for the artists will be held on Thursday, October 23rd from 6 to 8 PM. Their first solo exhibition in the United States, Dam Lines showcases the multidisciplinary abilities of the artists featuring photography, painting, and a large-scale installation.
In the public art installation, Language Barrier: Lower Manhattan, Alina and Jeff selected five different locations (a park; a news stand; a deli; an art foundation; and a shoe repair and barber shop), each chosen for its contemporary and historical significance and intervened along various corridors with piles of foam dictionaries. These physical barriers served to underline the fragility of communication, the construction of language and the human need for translation. By obscuring sightlines, blocking windows and physically interrupting daily routines throughout Lower Manhattan, the artists have also drawn attention to the social and cultural differences that have characterized life in New York City throughout its history.
Alina and Jeff documented further site-specific installations of Language Barrier around their studio in Andes, New York. Translating the Language Barrier project from the urban confines of Lower Manhattan to the bucolic setting in the Catskills has allowed Alina and Jeff to build on the central theme of the project by addressing it from another angle. Photographed documentation from both projects will be on display at Andrea Meislin Gallery alongside a new installation, Dam Lines.
Destroying the old – the woods, a given territory – in order to rebuild anew, Dam Lines presents the beaver as the ultimate rebel. Beavers mark territory and conceive of land in terms of demarcated space, in a way akin to human ideas about private property. The beaver installed in Dam Lines also ironically references Delacroix’s iconic painting of the French Revolution, Liberty Leading the People. Communicating, navigating barriers, and recognizing when they must be removed, repaired or rebuilt is nothing less than the protean struggle to find our own niche in the ecosystem of human society. The work of Alina and Jeff Bliumis invites us to openly embrace this work of discovering and constructing our own individual and collective complexity.
Alina and Jeff's work has been exhibited internationally including the First and Second Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (Russia), Busan Biennale 2006 (South Korea), Assab One (Italy), Castlefield Gallery (UK). Additionally their work belongs to various private and public collections, including the Moscow Museum of Modern Art and the Saatchi Collection. For more information please contact the gallery at info@andreameislin.com.
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