FOR RELEASE

SERGEI BUGAEV AFRIKA

MIR: MADE IN THE XX CENTURY

Dates: January 29 – March 11, 2000
Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 10-6

Opening: Saturday, January 29, 6-8
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In this exhibition Afrika has created a work within a globe that can be understood as
representative of his art. Mir: Made in the XX Century uses one of his fundamental
artistic devises - - the aestheticizing of trauma. The project was based on Afrika’s
experience with patients in one of the Crimean psychiatric hospitals, where he
videotaped an illegal electroshock treatment. Patients there recounted various
histories to the artist united by the fact that at the precise moment of the electro-
shocks they had visions – many images rushed past their internal eyes.

Using this as a metaphor for the psyche and how it works, the artist has created
his own realm of floating images and illusions. Viewers of the exhibit will see photo
images that the artist transferred to enamel plates – images that mostly document
Soviet life, or show the way the Soviets saw themselves in the 20th Century.

Intentionally eroded as they are, the photographs represent a detached parting view
of the 20th Century: a century of political utopianism, a century of industrial progress,
a century of photography, a century of electroshock therapy. Further creating an
environment for the large-scale work, Brian Eno has adapted a musical fragment
from Rachmaninoff’s composition, “Isle of the Dead.”

Mir: Made in the XX Century was adapted for this exhibition from Afrika’s installation for
the Russian Federation Pavilion at the 48th Venice Biennale.

The artist has had numerous exhibitions, including the Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art Amsterdam; the MAK-Austrian Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna; the Pori Art Museum,
Finland; the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio; the Power Plant, Toronto;
and the Clocktower Gallery, P.S.I. Contemporary Art Center, New York.

Afrika, 33, remains in St. Petersburg, where he lives and works.

A publication, the 11th and first in a new series by I-20, with a text by Olesya Turkina,
will accompany the exhibition.

For further information or visuals, please contact Paul Judelson, Gil Presti, Duane Hanson, Jr.,
or Sabine Spahn at (212) 645-1100; fax (212) 645-0198; e: judelson@I-20.com

web: I-20.com