Aida Mahmudova: Non-Imagined Perspectives / Michelangelo Pistoletto: Do It

YARAT Contemporary Art Space, a not-for-profit non-governmental contemporary art organisation in Baku, presents a solo exhibition of new works by Azerbaijani artist and founder of YARAT, Aida Mahmudova.

This exhibition is curated by Suad Garayeva-Maleki.

Across the top floor of the exhibition space, the artist has produced an entirely new body of work that builds on her exploration of material as a tool for experimentation. For the artist the process of destruction and re-creation, of building layers and tearing them apart, of mixing various materials, such as paper, clay, cement, stone and, for the first time in this show marble, becomes an exercise for material growth and emotional healing. The total installation of sculptures, resembling crumbling pillars, and monumental wall works create a feeling of a transient place, half ruined and half built, and one is reminded that entropy is an essential step of creation. For Mahmudova the process is everything and her textured works act as tokens of memory, each layer exposing a particular moment on the artist’s personal time-space continuum.

Early on in her work, Mahmudova developed a curiosity towards material, which manifested itself through experimentation with light, color and matter in her landscapes and semi-abstract canvases. As her paintings became increasingly more layered the artist expanded her practice into the three dimensional, applying the same approach to sculpture and creating environments both emotive and intense. Harmonious with the physical nature of her chosen materials and her preferred earthly palette, her deeply intuitive explorations continue to evolve across the spectrum of universal human sentiments of love, loss, memory and desire. In the artist’s own words, “this artistic process is in a way an act of tearing away at our fundamental principles, which are manmade and therefore ultimately fragile.” Read more

YARAT Contemporary Art Space also presents a solo exhibition of new and seminal archive works by Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto.

This exhibition is curated by Björn Geldhof

In collaboration with GALLERIA CONTINUA, San Gimignano, Beijing, Les Moulins, Habana

Central to the exhibition is Pistoletto’s 2003 text “Terzo Paradiso” (“Third Paradise”), a manifesto for a harmonious future where nature and society coexist. “Third Paradise” states the social responsibility to seek a more sustainable world, “leading everything that is artificial; that is science and technology together with art; to give back life to Earth.”

For his solo exhibition at YARAT, Pistoletto continues to use this ideology as the catalyst for new installations, which are presented in conversation with a selection of the artist’s early works. The notion of sustainability is further manifested through a series of educational programs focused on the methodology Pistoletto and his Foundation (Cittadellarte) developed for schoolchildren, including workshops for schoolchildren, young artists and a lecture series for university students. Taking place over the course of one year, this educational component will train local Azeri educators in schools across Azerbaijan to develop and expand upon the way children approach sustainability and creative processes.

The symbol of the “Third Paradise” can be seen throughout Pistoletto’s oeuvre—a reconfiguration of the mathematical infinity sign where three connecting circle are drawn. The outer circles represent nature and artifice, joined together by a larger circle representing a new humanity. Celebrated as a pioneer of Arte Povera, Pistoletto’s practice spans across painting, sculpture and performance. Since the 1960s the mirrored surface has been a recurring theme in the artist’s practice, exemplifying his interest in the performative whilst creating a space for self-reflection. Read more 

Preview: March 27, 2018 
Hours: Tuesday through Sunday, 12–8pm
Admission is free