Puerto Rican - France Collective “Garcia Frankowski’ in a group exhibition at Intelligentsia Gallery, Beijing

PRART NEWS - Intelligentsia Gallery is excited to present ‘A Victory over Nothingness: Purse Snatch in Streetcar and other post Fevralist Absurdities’ a group exhibition with works by Xie Molin (b. 1979 Wenzhou, China), Pavel Kiselev (b. 1984 Moscow, Russia) Aoto Oouchi (b. 1976 Vienna, Austria) Garcia Frankowski (b. 1983 San Juan, Puerto Rico & b. 1985 Dundee, Scotland).

A Victory Over Nothingness explores the philosophical nihilism initially postulated by the Fevralist period of Kazimir Malevich that was consummated in the conception of his first Black Square in 1915. One hundred years after setting as a goal the destruction of the dominant rational worldview and reconceptualizing the role of the work of art， the exhibition presents once more the possibility of nothingness as ‘gesamkunstwerk’.

Cruz García and Nathalie Frankowski

A new set of existential questions arise in the form of strategies, concepts and processes venturing into an epistemological nirvana where machinistic paintings, reconstructed compositions, message carriers, and absurdist strategists are the flag bearers of a post non-objective anti-rationale battle.

More than offering answers or stating ultimate conclusions the exhibition proposes art as anti-narrative, substituting the utilitarian banalization of art by the reapropiation of ‘nothingness’ as ethos. A Victory Over Nothingness challenges the possibility of ultimate reduction and aims to create a world no longer abridged to its representation, a world where the artwork would stand for itself and where the nonsensical ‘purse snatch in streetcar’ would reign supreme.

Curated by Hao Chen, the 9th international exhibition celebrates the first anniversary of Intelligentsia Gallery and the centenary of the Black Square with a selection of painting, video, installation and mix media aiming at starting the ultimate philosophical battle and declaring A Victory Over Nothingness.

Reconstructed Composition 3

Garcia Frankowski is an art collective founded by Puerto Rican artist, architect, author and theorist Cruz Garcia (b.1983, San Juan) and French artist, architect, poet and theorist Nathalie Frankowski (b.1985, Dundee). Their work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions around the world, including at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Intelligentsia Gallery and PIFO New Art Gallery in Beijing, the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art (CFCCA) in Manchester and in shows in Barcelona, Madrid, London, Beijing, Paris, San Juan, Porto, Lisbon, Tokyo, Osaka, Melbourne, Sydney, Shanghai, Helsinki, Chicago, Buenos Aires, Santiago de Chile, Montevideo, Prague, Bratislava, Milan, and Los Angeles.