Solo show by Elena Kovylina at Analix Forever

Elena Kovylina or the Misunderstanding

from 14 November 2009 to 14 January 2010
Opening 14 and 15 November 09 from 11 am to 6 pm
t +41 22 329 17 09 rue de l’Arquebuse 25 | CH-1204 Genève
f +41 22 329 54 01 analix@forever-beauty.com | www.analix-forever.com

In Moscow, where she lives, Elena Kovylina has no studio. Her place of work is therefore urban space or institutions; her medium, performance. From Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin to the Sharjah Biennial, from a square in Salzburg to the Cetinie Biennial, from the MAK in Vienna to the art fair in Miami, Elena Kovylina takes over spaces and contexts in order to present radical performances that question conventions, norms and dogmas. The vocabulary and position adopted by the artist are extreme. Often, she puts herself in danger physically and thus subjects spectators to the risk of witnessing a potentially fatal outcome. Her performances disturb and fascinate, provoking both unease and desire. In Geneva, this Russian performance artist spent the summer of 2009 in residence at Galerie Analix Forever in order to carry out a project long close to her heart. The summer was one long painting session. Kovylina thus returned to the rigorous apprenticeship of a classical style of painting that had occupied nearly twelve years of her life before she chose another means of expression. Making the most of this summer residency, she decided to do studio work in the gallery space and chose to reappropriate the image of her past performances by producing new images, in this case canvases. These canvases reproduce stills from montages of the videos she made of her performances. First misunderstanding: in these videos, the artist is not entirely in control of her images, which are necessarily filtered through the prism of a third party, whose choice of shots betrays an approach that, for all the subsequent editing, can never exactly match the artist’s original intentions – the “picture” of the performance that she had in her head before she made it. In order to dissolve this distance, Elena Kovylina uses painting. Here is the second misunderstanding: the artist who calls herself a performer becomes a painter and produces a series of pictures. Here Kovylina can choose her perspective, subject, light and colour, the details to focus on, and the materials to be used,
thus completely reappropriating, by her own subjectivity, the result of her work. The result is a series of realist canvases retracing the artist’s steps, all the way to the last performance, given at the Analix Forever gallery on 13 August 2009: Voulez-vous un café ? or Feu le monde bourgeois, an event now attested by the charred table installed in the exhibition, the edited video of the performance and the last canvas in this cycle, representing its climax. The circle thus closes, whereas the misunderstanding could well prove more lasting: at the end of the summer, Kovylina felt that perhaps the only way of dispelling it might be to once again make painting part of her artistic practice.

Elena Kovylina was born in 1971 and lives and works in Moscow. Le Malentendu is her first solo exhibition in Western Europe.


Exhibition from 14 November 2009 to 14 January 2010, Tuesday to Saturday from 2 pm to 7 pm and by appointment.

With the support of VideoSystems, Geneva

Mark Boswell at Cambridge Film Festival, UK, September, September 2009

Photo by Ken Hollings

Review by Festival Daily on 27 Sep 2009

‘I’m sorry if that hurt, that was not my intention,’ says Mark Boswell, opening his Q&A following the screening of a number of his short films, running chronologically through the years from 2001 to 2008. Obviously the audience thought the contrary, but this sets the tone of the whole event - both the films and the discussion afterwards – full of energy and humour, and never less than engrossing.

Dealing with issues ranging from global warming to the obsession with the hamburger in US society, the joy of viewing a collection in this manner is that it is possible to see running themes and idiosyncrasies in Boswell’s work, such as his interest in the Bush administration and post-Cold War issues. Comprised mainly of existing footage (due to his ‘criminal inclination to steal’, he jokes when asked about this), such as documentary and educational footage and importantly, films. In this, it is possible to see Boswell’s love of film and that he has studied the medium. Some of the highlights are laugh-out-loud moments where classic film scenes are used, but with subtitles contradicting what the characters are saying. His juxtaposition of the written word overlaying the image is remarkable, used in various ways throughout.

Abstract and certainly not narrative in the traditional sense, the variety of images thrown at the audience is obviously selected and constructed with intelligence and personality – which at times could lose the audience, is also a pleasure, being able to take away a list of titles, names and images that you want to research and explore further.

Indeed, the event as a whole revealed that Boswell is just as interesting as his films. An exciting filmmaker, who aptly sums up his work, ‘pessimism interacting with too many movies and too much realism’. How could that not be intriguing?

MIKE BOYD

http://www.cambridgefilmfestival.org.uk/films/2009/mark-boswell-the-art-of-nova-kino