Miden screenings at Kinono Tinos Art Gathering

 

 

Video Art Miden travels to Tinos Island (GR), to present a video art program entitled  I never promised you a real garden, curated by Gioula Papadopoulou, in the frame of the “Virtual Gardens” unit of this year’s Kinono Tinos Art Gathering.

The screening will take place at the “Fig Garden”, at Chora, Tinos, on Sunday, August 26, 21.30.

More info and the complete program of Kinono Tinos Art Gathering 2018 can be found here

 

I never promised you a real garden

 

Curated by Gioula Papadopoulou

Duration: 58 min

 

How happy are you in your virtual paradise? 12 video-artists from the Netherlands, Italy, Ukraine, Lithuania, France, Finland, Germany, Sweden, Chile and USA create (or decompose) natural and artificial paradise gardens, exploring the concept of individual and collective paradise, as recorded through a timeless fantasy in mythology, religion and art.

 

Some of the selected works have direct references to the biblical paradise, as it happens in the work “Danse macabre” by Boris Labbé, who uses three-dimensional graphics to create a macabre world of war and death, choosing as a background the emblematic work “The Garden of Earthly Delights“, by Hieronymus Bosch.

 

Virtual reality and three-dimensional graphics become the means of creating idealized fantasy gardens and virtual landscapes in “Night Comes” by Víctor Ballesteros and “Euphoria” by Hwayong Jung, while Yana Sakellion develops, through the choreographic movement of abstract forms, a musical biomorphic “garden” that is constantly being transformed, in the video “Pereselenije Moviement IV“.

 

Ana B. and Nuno M. Pereira use, in their work “The Kingdom“, a digital collage to create their own paradise, displaying all the clichés of paradise iconography (palms and tropical plants, paradise birds and animals) in an allegory for the eternal human quest for the ultimate freedom in “wildlife” – an eternal illusion.

 

Tania Bohuslavska in her video “Autumn” creates, with “natural assemblage”, a leaf mask with pagan and Dionysian references, which existentially fade through the action and movement of the performer. Marlijn Franken in the music video “If Only ..” creates a magical surreal garden with symbols (like the live apple) that directly refer to the biblical version of Paradise and its loss, while Avaspo and Solveiga Serova in their music video “Chess Queen” visualize a strange elliptical narrative, dramatized between a lyrical garden and a strict urban scenery.

 

A short symbolic and dystopian tale is narrated in the work “Intolerance” by Tessa Ojala, describing it herself as “the story of a man who thinks he is intolerant to the beauty of the world,” while, on the contrary, in the animation “Takeoff” by Eva Olsson literally a man takes off through nature.

 

Era Vati in the video “Crossing” creates a tableau vivant with human figures and natural elements like fruits and vegetables, inspired by the symbolism of Dutch and German painting of the 16th-17th century, which is full of symbolic “reminders” for the viewers, while Cristina Pavesi in her video “Calla” uses a lily in an inverted symbolic gesture associated with the destruction and regeneration of natural beauty, in a “moving still life”.

 

All the works in this unit create the sense of a walk in a garden where everything can happen and at the same time everything dissolves like in a dream. Nature, beauty, destruction and rebirth coexist poetically and symbolically in a sequence of images that the viewer is invited to synthesize in his own experience and interpretation and outline his own personal “virtual paradise”.

 

Cristina Pavesi, Calla, Italy 2016, 1.18

Marlijn Franken, If Only.., The Netherlands 2013, 4.03

Tania Bohuslavska, Autumn, Ukraine 2016, 1.50

Víctor Ballesteros, Night Comes, Canada/Chile 2011, 5.16

Hwayong Jung, Euphoria, USA 2014, 5.23

Ana B. & Nuno M. Pereira, The Kingdom, Portugal 2013, 2.39

Avaspo & Solveiga Serova, Chess Queen, Lithuania/UK 2013, 7.08

Tessa Ojala, Intolerance, Finland 2015, 2.39

Era Vati, Crossing, Germany 2011, 3.19

Yana Sakellion, Pereselenije Moviement IV, USA 2013, 4.50

Eva Olsson, Takeoff, Sweden 2013, 2.14

Boris Labbé, Danse macabre, France 2013, 16.09