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 25 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.’”
