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Photo reportage from the exhibition ‘Cosmic Corals, Voguing Valleys, Bushy Bouquets, Furry Forests’ by Alina Melnikova at Souvenir, Barcelona

A fantastical proposal with roots in an urban party that featured funky neon-lit plants. Cosmopolitan wraps around weeds, human wrists coil into voguing branches, wind meshes with breezy whispers…greens never looked so foreign. Let the algae in, let the fungi digest…

Alina Melnikova and Gabriel Virgilio Luciani welcome you to a fecund wonder-space composed of new ceramic pieces and flatwork weaved together by the artist. Cosmic Corals, Voguing Valleys, Bushy Bouquets, Furry Forests is a fantastical proposal –as well as Alina’s first solo show in Catalonia– with roots in an urban party that featured funky neon-lit plants. Cosmopolitan wraps around weeds, human wrists coil into voguing branches, wind meshes with breezy whispers…greens never looked so foreign. Let the algae in, let the fungi digest…

The project is funded by the Lithuanian Culture Council
In collaboration with The Rooster Gallery

Alina Melnikova is a visual artist born in Vilnius (Lithuania), and lives and works between her hometown and Barcelona (Spain). Her artistic research is dominated by her own living environment. She has an anthropological interest in stereotypes, lifestyles and subcultures. She is fascinated by visual aspects of seduction and shifting perception of naturalness and artificiality which she presents by creating hybridic contexts using drawn and painted images together with clay objects.
In 2009, she won the Award for Young Painters in Lithuania; in 2013, she was invited to the international artist residency “La Cité Internationale des Arts” in Paris. Her work has been exhibited in art institutions of international importance like the KUMU Contemporary Art Center in Tallinn (Estonia) and the CAC of Vilnius (Lithuania).

The sphere of research explored by catalan-american curator Gabriel Virgilio Luciani finds itself at a gaseous intersection between neo-corporealities, poetry, queer theory, magic and objectual affectivity. Understanding the subject —biological, liquid, mineral, gaseous, solid life— as an indefinite and mutating vessel of affect and potentiality is at the axis around which these inquiries orbit. This theoretical basis is realised by poetically and empirically scanning the emotive substrate of our world, seeking new poly-relational cartographies between that which we binarily consider inanimate and animate, extinct and extant, active and passive.

Over the past six years they have had their shows featured in ArtNou, a festival for emerging art, and Loop video-art festival and have curated and co-curated projects at THEFLOOR, The Charlotte Art League, La Cera 13, TKM Room, l’Escola Massana, àngels barcelona espai 2. In 2020, they curated 1 collective show at Tangent Projects along with Margot Cuevas, and 3 individual shows at L&B gallery, Galeria H2O and at the Reial Cercle Artístic (as an invited curator for the ‘1+1+1’ curated edition of Loop video-art festival 2020).

Alina Melnikova
Cosmic Corals, Voguing Valleys, Bushy Bouquets, Furry Forests
29 May – 27 June, 2021
Souvenir, Barcelona
Curator: Gabriel Virgilio Luciani
Photography: Fabrizio Contarino

 

Cosmic Coral X, XI; Flying Bush I

Cosmic Coral X, XI

Cosmic Coral III, VIII

Cosmic Coral VIII; Inside Green II, III

Green Thumbs; Cosmic Coral III-VIII

Cosmic Coral II, VII

Cosmic Coral III

Exhibition view

Cosmic Coral V, VI

Exhibition view

Exhibition view

Exhibition view

Cosmic Coral VII,VII, IX

Cosmic Coral I

Exhibition view

Flying Bush; Inside Green II

Exhibition view

Exhibition view

Exhibition view

Exhibition view

Exhibition view

Exhibition view