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Project 59 exhibition at Bronx River Art Center
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Artist Irina Danilova will present her work at the Bronx River Art Center from January 12 to
March 11. Photo courtesy of the Bronx River Art Center
This Retrospective of Ukrainian-
American Artist Irina Danilova will
take place at the Bronx River Art
Center from Sunday, January 12 to
Wednesday, March 11. The show will
present installations, performances,
video, events and interventions of
this mid-career international but decidedly
American immigrant artist.
The exhibition will examine Danilova’s
art through the eyes of likeminded
(Russian) immigrant curators:
Yulia Tikhonova, coordinator of
Gallery and Museum Services, Eastern
Connecticut State University,
and Olga Kondur, Ph.D. Candidate,
Department of Art History, Pennsylvania
State University. Both have an
in-depth knowledge of pre and post
Soviet nonconformist artistic practice,
and particularly the rarity of
women artists in this mix. Tikhonova
and Kondur strongly identify
with, and support, the struggle of
women artists in general, and particularly
in the still male dominated
arts circles of Eastern and Central
Europe. Through thoughtful curatorial
analysis, this exhibition aims to
locate the art of this ingenious multidisciplined
and multi-national artist
on the contemporary map of conceptual
and participatory art.
Tikhonova observes Danilova’s
aesthetic origins in pre-Perestroika
Soviet Russia. According to Tikhonova,
“If you consider Irina Danilova
a Russian artist, you are greatly mistaken.
Danilova occupies a unique position
amongst a long list of her (mostly
male!) compatriots who escaped the
reactionary and isolating reality of
Soviet society and made America
their home.
While still in Russia in the 1980s,
she joined the group of Moscow Nonconformist
Artists, who borrowed
Fluxus’ stream of consciousness, unruliness,
and absurdity as the best
weapon to combat the crumbling edifi
ce of Soviet pre-Perestroika reality.
Transnationalism was at the heart of
the Fluxus program and it has fueled
the spirit of Danilova’s cross-border
practices”.
According to Olga Kondur, “Irina
Danilova’s life-long art project is
based on a deceivingly simple concept
of a randomly chosen two-digit
number, 59, which she uses to intervene
in all possible spheres of human
existence, ranging from everyday
life and socio-political realms to
aesthetic matters and metaphysical
inquiries.
On the surface, Danilova’s art
appears to be obvious, she has been
collecting or recording every single
evidence of 59 she encounters in the
world for the last 25 years - material
objects which contain the number
in various media. The obsessive and
utopian nature of this project poses
a broader question: what is the potential
of a single random criterion
in building its own world of relationships?
Danilova’s idiosyncratic project
reveals that such a world is far
from being simple and obvious.”
Trained as an artist in
Ukraine (BA), Danilova immigrated
to the United States in 1995 and received
an MFA degree from the
School of Visual Arts in New York
City (1996). She has been teaching
at Kingsborough College of CUNY
in Brooklyn, NY since 2002. Irina
has participated in numerous group
shows in museums and galleries
throughout the US, including the
Zimmerli Museum at Rutgers University,
Smithsonian Museum, Islip
Museum, and Weisman Art Museum
in Minneapolis, as well as major art
spaces including the Mattress Factory
in Atlanta, Spaces Gallery in
Cleveland, Elizabeth Foundation,
Gallery Project Space, the Bronx
River Art Center, Vilcek Foundation,
and the Center for Book Art in
New York.
Internationally she has shown
her work, performed and lectured,
in Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Italy,
Germany, Iceland, Australia, Chile,
France, Israel, and the UK. Despite
this prolifi c career, she has not had
a solo survey or retrospective exhibition
yet.
This show, and its associative catalogue,
with in-depth curatorial essays,
intends to bring to light this
ingenious and prolifi c multi-disciplined
and multi-national artist.
Danilova has had a long history
with BRAC, having curated two
ground-breaking exhibitions in our
galleries - “e-Europe”, in 1999, an
early internet-based exhibition of
Eastern European artists that included
live transmission with artists
from Poland, Ukraine and other
Eastern European countries; and
Brurel: Shattering Phenomena, 2014,
an exhibition of artists from Russia
and New York that mined the impact
on local communities and individuals
by the Chelyabinsk Meteorite and
Superstorm Sandy for its unique cultural
content.
The Bronx River Art Center looks
forward to giving this extraordinary
artist and individual her own stage
to shine her star upon.
Entrance to the exhibition is free
and open to the public, Monday to
Friday from noon to 6 p.m., and on
Saturdays from noon to 5 p.m. The
opening reception is Sunday, January
12, from 2 to 5 p.m..
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