Liza Bobkova: Restoration of Time
12th of March – 24th of March, 2024
ART4
Cromwell Place,
4 Cromwell Pl,
South Kensington
London SW7 2JE
A bright new international talent is bringing her work to London, where she will be launching her first UK exhibition at ART4 in Cromwell Place, South Kensington in the gallery’s room 11. The exhibition, Restoration of Time, will take place between the 12th of March, 2024, and is on view until the 24th. Liza Bobkova grew up in Soviet Russia, near the border with Latvia. The artist graduated in St. Petersburg from the Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design, Russia’s oldest design school. A city sparse in established museums or galleries, her style developed instead in the milieu of its
lively underground micro-spaces. Her work favours the pursuit of expression over direct message, moving flexibility between the approach and material best suited to her vision and chosen theme.
Bobkova’s work seeks to explore the new shape of communication in the 21st century. The artist favours the creative use of material and medium, finding ways to re-express our familiar forms of communication. Through her work Bobkova encourages a shift in perspective. She unveils the texture of a message or conversation in the new context of bold materials like metal and glass, through total installation or an act of performance.
From videographic portraiture in Presence Detection Methods (2022), to engravings on window panes in There Were 10 Sunny Days in January (2019) or the scintillating wire sculptures of Period of Oscillation (2016), her work is ambiguous and often surprising, whereby the invisible aesthetic properties of an ordinary message become its defining features.
In 2023 Bobkova moved from Russia to London, where she opened ART4, London’s newest contemporary art gallery. For Bobkova, ART4 represents a chance to participate in the rich London market, an ecosystem of art and creativity on a scale that is new to the artist.
She has been inspired by the work of her husband and gallery’s co-founder Igor Markin, the founder of ART4 museum – Moscow’s largest private contemporary art space. The curation of ART4 gallery will echo Bobkova’s love of raw materials and specialised craftsmanship (Bobkova herself spent seventeen years as an artisan blacksmith), favouring artists that use classic earth materials to produce unfamiliar, contemporary art. There are two exhibitions planned for the spring, and three for the autumn alongside the gallery’s participation at international art fairs.
Bobkova’s new exhibition, Restoration of Time, continues her study on material and
communication. It features two brand-new series of sculptural works, one in bronze and the other in porcelain. The bronze series features 30 etched and polished plaques. The porcelain features 18 asymmetric porcelain squares alongside a porcelain house of cards. Bobkova uses these materials to explore our relationship with the linear progression of time. With both metal and ceramics, the process of craftsmanship is often arduous: porcelain hand-rolled paper thin and carefully fired to produce delicate sheets; bronze painstakingly engraved with abstract images transcribed from the sound waves of digital voice notes.
‘I am glad that I did not stop at the direction that the academy gave me. Artists with a classical education often stop at the edge of Method… The most important thing is that we worked with real materials in our hands from the first days. This is the reason why I boldly paint sand in rainbow colours, paint fabrics, shoot films, do performances, polish and weld metal, sew shirts with my mom, create jewellery. I am free to explore dif erent creative paths and extremely happy about it.’ – Liza Bobkova
They maintain an air of fragility distinct from their rugged canvas, just as the porcelain house of cards instils an anxiety reflective of the unstable nature of the present moment. The artwork in both materials is indirect, and the interpretive work of the viewer plays a central role in its messaging. Their minimalist installation encourages the contemplation of these deceptively simple pieces.
The exhibition will be on view in Cromwell Place’s eleventh room from 13 March to 24 March 2024.
Liza Bobkova: Restoration of Time opens on the 12th of March until the 24th of March, 2024 at ART4, Cromwell Place
©2024 ART4
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