On February 10 Almagul Menlibayeva, one of the most famous people among modern Kazakhstan artists, presented her works at the exhibition called “GREEN, YELLOW, RED and GREEN AGAIN”. The exhibition was held in conjunction with the opening of a new gallery of contemporary art Tse Art Destination gallery, located at Respublika 33a street, in the historical district of the city, near the Zhastar Theatre.
Being graduated from the Almaty State Theatre and Art Institute named after Jurgenev, she is well known by her works that were shown in the Venetian and Moscow Biennales, Sotheby’s auction. Almagul considers the Soviet school of photography to be her education, she combines it with nomadic aesthetics in her work. That was the technique that she used in her GREEN, YELLOW, RED and GREEN AGAIN exhibition.
The exhibition was the first to present video work, which became part of the project of the Moscow Biennale of 2015 with the theme “How to live together?”. It covers the topic of globalization in the XXI century with a multitude of connections and conflicts. The title of this video, like the title of the exhibition itself, refers to a film by the South Korean film directed by Kim Kiduk “Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring Again”. The artist erases the boundaries between Astana, Almaty, Paris and Berlin, uniting them by a common rhythm of life, regulated by the general laws of switching of three colors of the traffic light- green, yellow and red. South Korean director was not the only inspiration for Menlibayeva, her series of works called “Cans” was influenced by the iconic image of Campbell’s soup by Andy Warhol. The messenger windows with the missing message on the background of militaristic prints reflects the link between war and the market.
The works such as “Feminism is inevitable”, “Pills”, “Moving” enjoyed special popularity of visitors of the exhibition. In addition to it, the exhibition presents multimedia works from the new series “Artist and Economy”, as well as the already well-known series of photos “My Silk Road to You X” and “Butterfy of Aisha Bibi”. These series of works represent Central Asia as an ancient urbanized city with monumental mosaics.
All of these works were performed in the technique of printing on archival paper, which is a peculiar feature of the work of the Almagul Mengalieva. In the art gallery you could also buy T-shirts with the famous paintings of Almagul, or other ones with logo of the gallery. For those who are interested in the work of other talented photographers and artists of the country, a book and a catalog of the works of our compatriots were presented.
Therefore, if you want to immerse into the world of art I suggest you to develop spiritually with the help of creativity of Kazakhstani artists. Such pastime will be especially pleasant in such atmospheric conditions as TSE Art Destination gallery.
Aruzhan Kuandyk
