On 15 April Art4 Gallery presents the first international solo exhibition by artist Danila Polyakov. His project Madonna in Paradise will be on view from 15 to 21 April at the gallery space Cromwell Place, South Kensington.
Combining skill and the simplicity of the medium, anxiety and irony, naivety and kitsch, contemporary artist and performer Danila Polyakov explores questions of identity, the interaction of humans and technology, and himself and his relationship to the external world.
“While working on this exhibition I thought about what is happening globally: how digital technologies have begun to play games with memory, with the associative sequence and with our feelings. Gadgets can capture or transform our memory, working like a huge infrastructure for managing people. My art gives the viewer the opportunity to receive living emotions or to express their own.
Why Madonna in Paradise? Because of where the exhibition is taking place. The first time I came to London was in 2005, when I didn’t know any English. I got into a taxi when I arrived and immediately asked where the singer Madonna lived. If then such information was not really accessible, now it is an open knowledge. All kinds of nonsense is easily documented using technology and it’s difficult to do anything about it. And here I am in London again. During the performance at the opening, I want to lie on a special thing, like Lenin in the Mausoleum, and when Madonna hears about me and comes to the exhibition and kisses me, I will come to life.
‘And what if she doesn’t come?’
‘That’s why she’s also in Heaven.’”
The exhibition will be on view in Gallery 11 at Cromwell Place from 15 to 21 April 2024.
About ART4:
ART4 UK is London’s newest contemporary art gallery, presenting emerging, international artists to the London art scene. The project is directed by artist Liza Bobkova, who will also spearhead the curatorial programme. Bobkova aspires to foster a multidisciplinary exhibition programme. For its curatorial direction, the gallery will focus on work that re-imagines raw, tactile material in surprising new shapes and forms, favouring creatives with a technical speciality present in the finished work. In 2024 a series of shows will each introduce a new contemporary artist - both established favourites, and young up-and-comers. The gallery space is located at Cromwell Place in South Kensington, London.
Danila Polyakov Bio:
Danila Polyakov (born 1983) is a Russian artist and performer. He began his career as a dancer and male model, working with John Galiano, David Bradshaw, Steven Meisel and Sam Taylor-Johnson and others. Manifesting fashion in his art experience, Danila turned to the graphic genre, and later to textile and embroidery work. In his objects and performances, which convey complex experiences of reality, the artist explores themes of self-identification, physicality and gender identity. His practice is a key tool for studying himself and his connections with the outer world.
“Danila creates projects in an instant and literally out of nothing. When I saw Danila’s work made from empty sheets of paper on the wall, I realized he could transform any space. And, while until 2018 there were mainly small drawings, from that moment on he could own any size. Every artist works in his own size, and Danila owns whichever size your mind dares think of.
He, actually, had worked with fabric all this time, since his very first public exhibition “Beware Your Desire” (2009). He combines his ownership of space with the sewing skills he mastered during his modeling career to create art objects”.
Igor Markin, co-founder of Art4 Gallery
Image: (detail) Danila Polyakov, 'London', 2020, courtesy of Art4 Gallery.
