NYAB Event - Grisha Bruskin “H-Hour”

Grisha Bruskin “H-Hour”

Marlborough (Midtown)

This event has ended.

The exhibition will consist of an environment of approximately forty bronze sculptures painted with white enamel, which were created from the years 2008 to 2012. These works were exhibited at the Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow during the fall of 2012 and at the American University Museum during the spring of 2013. In 2012 Bruskin received the Kandinsky Prize- the most prestigious Russian award for the achievement in contemporary visual arts.

Grisha Bruskin’s new sculpture project H-Hour examines the myth of the enemy without specific historical or geographical ties, and in very diverse manifestations: the hostile state, class enemy, enemy of the subconscious, “the other” as enemy, Time, Chronos and Death as enemies, the Enemy of the Human Species, and so on.

In H-Hour the artist’s concerns are how the trivial is made sacred, how strong the hypnotic power of art and the image in general really is, and how depiction can become a means and instrument for manipulating human consciousness.

The artist writes: “H-Hour is a parable about the enemy, manifested in absurd metaphors. Just as in the civil defense posters, H-Hour exists in an emergency situation…In our times (the struggle against the enemy and primarily, against international terrorism), the state of exception is no longer an exception but becoming the norm everywhere, including democratic countries..Today, arriving in Moscow or New York, the world seems to me in both places as it did when I was a child staring a civil defense posters, with the horror and stupor of an ‘outsider.’”