Alexandre Gertsman Contemporary Art is pleased to announce a special group exhibition (35 artists) celebrating the company’s 25th anniversary of representing in the United States the artists born in the Former USSR and presently living and working in Ukraine, the USA, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain and other countries.
Works by art-tandem BM Babak-Matveev and world-renowned artists including Oleg Dergachov, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid, Natalya Nesterova, Tatyana Nazarenko, Alexander Petrov, Michail Roginsky, Vladimir Yankilevsky and others will be on display at the gallery from November 2017 through April 2018.
Four pieces by BM Babak-Matveev (artists Mykola Babak and Evgene Matveev) from the collection of Alexandre Gertsman will be presented at the exhibition: two diptychs from the Family Album Project and two works from the Messages from «Paradise» Project. In May of 2018, the AGCA Gallery will open its doors for the solo exhibition of the art-tandem BM Babak-Matveev. Art-tandem BM Babak-Matveev was created in 2013. It was an organic continuation of the successful collaboration of artists Mykola Babak and Evgene Matveev in the sphere of publishing. The 1st mutual art-work of the art-tandem is the Sacrifice Project, influenced by the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity. «Our weapons are consciousness, intelligence, an ability to weigh Good against Evil, as well as our professional skills that help us convey the deeper meaning of our creations», – Mykola Babak and Evgene Matveev have said.
In his article «Mykola Babak and Evgene Matveev: Dialectical Subversives», Donald Kuspit, one of America’s most distinguished art critics and art historians, referred to the work of the art-tandem as «conceptual and expressive masterpieces–tours de force of ironic, even absurdist dialectic as well as masterful demonstrations of Babak and Matveev’s ability to integrate different styles and mediums into a singular aesthetic statement».
David Margolick, a four-time Pulitzer Prize nominee and a longtime contributing editor and reporter at Vanity Fair, Newsweek and The New York Times noted the «mystical beauty» projected by the works of BM Babak-Matveev, underlining the artists’ unique approach to «memorializing and bringing the at times tragic past to life within a positive context».
On November 17th, 2017, a private preview of the 25th Anniversary Exhibition took place. Among the guests were His Excellency Volodymyr Yelchenko, Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the United Nations, and Mrs. Iryna Yelchenko; Prof. Donald Kuspit; David Margolick; Amir Korangy, the founder of the The Real Deal magazine; Jayne Kuchna, an art historian who has contributed to a number of major books for The Metropolitan Museum of Art; artist Vitaly Komar; art collectors Robert Holtzman and Mr. and Mrs. Fred Levine, composer Sergei Dreznin and jazz pianist and composer Eva Novoa, both of whom also performed.
About Alexandre Gertsman Contemporary Art
Alexandre Gertsman Contemporary Art (AGCA) produces a series of group and individual exhibitions throughout the year, showcasing both the most established artists born in the former USSR as well as introducing talented, new artists, since 1993. AGCA houses the largest collection of paintings, sculptures, photographs, works on paper, and objects by contemporary artists from the former Soviet Union in the United States. The NoHo gallery opened 2009.
Born in the city of Dnipropetrovsk (now Dnipro), Ukraine, Alexandre Gertsman is unequivocally acknowledged as an accomplished art dealer, independent curator and savant of post-Soviet contemporary art who has successfully orchestrated numerous traveling museum exhibitions throughout the United States, Europe, and the former USSR. Educated in Ukraine, his wealth of knowledge and understanding of the former Soviet Union and Eastern European experience (pre- and post-Perestroika) is aptly appropriated.
Many of the works represented at AGCA are by artists included in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, and The Guggenheim Museum in New York; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the National Art Gallery in Washington, D.C.; The Tate Gallery in London; Musee d’Art Moderne of Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris; Museum of Modern Art in Cologne; Canadian National Gallery; Australian National Gallery; Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam; The National Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow; The Hermitage in St. Petersburg; and The National Art Museum of Ukraine in Kyiv.
The exhibition will be on view until April 15th, 2018 by appointment only.
Alexandre Gertsman Contemporary Art is located at 652 Broadway, 2nd Floor, off Bleecker Street.
For more information, please visit www.agcontemporaryart.com or call
+1 646.344.1325.
For further information, please contact: Olga Kvitka,
tel: +1 646.229.3766,
email olga.kvitka.art@gmail.com
