Gabriella Gerosa. Public lecture “Beauty and Destruction, Beauty of Destruction”

Lecture hall of the Lopukhin Mansion (Maly Znamensky per. 3/5, bld. 4, 2nd floor)

Lecture is in German with consecutive translation in Russian and Russian Sign language.

The intertwining and interweaving of mythology and the moving image, especially in new media such as video art, has played a dominant role in the artistic work of Gabriella Gerosa since decades. Starting with a video cycle in 2003 called “The Feast”, up to her most recent projects, several mythological subjects are brought to the fore.

Firstly, mythological potentials and allusions are present in the never ending loop of the moving image of the video itself, which is known to be constructed out of an eternal digital pixel-stream. Eternal repetition, of course, is one of the oldest myths of prehistorical cultures (the figure of Sisyphos being the most popular example for eternal repetition). Just as Sisyphos – metaphorically speaking – we today find ourselves once again inside a never ending stream of image and data, an eternal flowing and repetition.

But also the wide range of associations surrounding the motifs of Gerosa’s video work, such as an opulently prepared table setting in “Buffetcrash” from the video cycle “The Feast”, has its mythological undertones: feast and ecstasy, beauty and sudden destruction converge - and they do so in sometimes disturbing manners.

At the lecture Gabriella will immerse the audience into her own myth-making and will show her versions of the intricacies of beauty and destruction.

Gabriella Gerosa is a video artist who lives and works in Basel. Her work is represented in numerous museums and private collections. Gerosa is a three-time winner of the Swiss Art Awards.

This lecture is held under the program Laboratory for the Moving Images Study, a joint project of the Pushkin.Youth and Pushkin XXI.