Liza Bobkova, Tanya Akhmetgalieva and Nina Karlsson are at an eternal party in Paris, Petersburg, and in a new episode – at the Aperto Raum art space in Berlin.

— “What is Berghain?”
— “What?? I don’t hear you!”

The artist and sculptor Liza Bobkova graduated from the department of metal art of the Stieglitz Academy in Petersburg in 2011, the same year that the artist Tanya Akhmetgalieva completed her university education at the faculty of monumental art, and department of textile art. At the same time the young composer and singer Nina Karlsson, after completing her studies at the Conservatory, gave improvisations on the poems of James Joyce at endless Petersburg parties.

“This disco would be inconceivable
But we dance – and so it’s believable”.
(lyrics from the song “Disco” by Nina Karlsson)

Finding themselves at the same time in the Parisian residence Cité Internationale des Arts in 2016, the artists felt the common feeling which began to entangle and disentangle their destines in an unpredictable way. At Aperto Raum, Akhmetgalieva and Bobkova present a visual project for the first time, in which the poignantly subtle graphic art of Liza Bobkova engulfs the Aperto Raum space in screaming silence, and places on illusory images of doubles with undetermined trajectory of movement from the videos of Tanya Akhmetgalieva. What can the doubles expect? Who are they/we? What are Nina and Liza playing at, hiding behind the masks of lonely joy? The celebration is filled with impossibility and collapses, or it is a dream and the imaginary celebration lasts forever. Tanya Akhmetgalieva’s balloons grow heavy and hang in the air, which is contained inside an empty shell.

Sound excerpts from phrases from a Dictaphone written down on paper recount an internal and outer dialogue with reality. They catch the exact time, recording the fact of presence. “I am here” Bobkova’s works literally shout, where are you? I am here.

“We all dance, and laugh, and sing
So tender and so comforting
Next morning, when the clock shows 5 a.m.
I’m going to dance again”
(lyrics from the song “Dance” by Nina Karlsson”)

The marked phrases make their way towards us and dissolve in the music of Nina Karlsson’s video double. We are at a party, and the updated roaring 2020s are about to begin, 100 years later. It’s high time to leave, but the party isn’t about to end, and the body is given over to sound and open space (Aperto Raum).

Anxious. Joyful. Muffled. Illusory. Cyclical.

Text: Elena Yushina

Aperto Raum curated by Alisa Yoffe is a project by the Moscow artist Alisa Yoffe in the Berlin underground space of the Aperto Raum exhibition hall and Aperto Paper, with photographs by Igor Mukhin, who takes a classical subject, the artist in the studio.

 In her works, Yoffe reflects the reality that flashes by in news feeds and social media, transforming it with coarse black daubs made by the finger on a telephone or tablet, or by the brush on any surface. The artist vastly simplifies and purges the image of mundanity, moving it to a canvas, paper, or leaving it in virtual space. This method of communication that Yoffe uses is an instantaneous, animal reaction to events, without words, through recognizable signs and images.

 The scope of the Berlin space and newspaper, which for the fourth time has the slogan For Immediate Release on the cover, is a reference to the typewritten press-release of Harald Szeeman’s exhibition When Attitudes Become Form (Works – Concepts – Processes – Situations – Information) from the late 1960s. The scenography of the Berlin space is based on the Gesamtkunstwerk model, created by the artist in a suprematist costume in the role of curator, and with a pointedly bare cover – Alisa Yoffe records black and white reality, stores it in a cloud and swiftly replicates it in on the walls of the exhibition space.

 50 years since Harald Szeeman’s exhibition at the Kunsthalle in Bern, how do we understand “immediate release”, which is the salient feature of works, concepts, processes, situations, and most importantly information?

We go back in time to ask the question of 1972: Questioning Reality — Pictorial Worlds Today.

Elena Yushina
(translated by Simon Patterson)

 *This project is supported by the Vladimir Smirnov and Konstantin Sorokin Foundation and the Information Portal of ArtTube
Cover photo: Aperto Raum curated by Alisa Yoffe. Exhibition view at Aperto Raum, Berlin, 2019  © Alexander Lavrentyev

Opening reception of “Aperto Raum curated by Alisa Yoffe”. Aperto Raum, Berlin, 2019 © Helena Melikov 

Alisa Yoffe. Aperto Raum, Berlin, 2019. Photo: Karina Ekizler-Kirillova