Lina Condes. Extraterrestrial Odyssey

In coincidence with the 57th Venice Biennale, CondesArt in collaboration with PDG Arte Communications presents Extraterrestrial Odyssey by Lina Condes curated by Paolo De Grandis, Tamara Li and Magdalena Gabriel.
Lina Condes is a pioneer in the use of technology, architecture and biology applied to the practice of art. She created iSculpture as a series of works conceived and developed using recent technological and multimedia studies.And from iSculptureher research has developed recently to give shape to compositions in which technology and architecture are not just the medium; the installations, drawings, animated images and projections interact and short-circuit to create an expressive process of interaction with the public. This practice results in powerful installations that are able to translate moods, sensations, emotions, reflections, bringing the spectator close to the soul of their creator.
Technology, the etymological root of which tells of its close relationship with art, has always influenced artistic creation, establishing the possibility of expression of artists and determining the passage to different functions of art, changing the ways in which it is used. This is how, in the works of Lina Condes, an image, a symbol or a frame is set free through that combination of technologies that allow a journey towards important discoveries. The message becomes comprehensible through the new means of expression, which investigates its meaning and brings it to a "different" plane of understanding where architecture comes into play, thanks to the need to view it both inside and out. As the language of architecture is based on form and composition, on the choice of elements and the articulation of spaces, this incursion into Lina Condes’s work becomes a bridge between creativeness and technological research.
For this new project in Venice, Lina Condes presents “Sphinx”, an emblematic iSculpture, iconographic fusion of an activated eye on a stylised body. This symbol of the eye takes us back into the territory linked with ancient myths, evoking light, knowledge, expression and spiritual strength in its positive acceptance. 

The eye as an interface between the external and the internal world. Here it is a unique sensor, able to perceive the world and its contradictions, a disturbing element. The eye as a living organism that embodies and displays - somatising them – the contractions of the existence and acts as a vehicle for impulses and feelings.
An investigating eye that manages to observe and search beyond human limits; a primordial eye, with timeless awareness. An eye that looks and is looked at, that tells something to the spectator and in which the spectator is reflected; an eye that encloses within the depths of its iris the colours and nuances of humanity, of present and past, and guards the future while awaiting it.
Knowledge is therefore the fulcrum of Extraterrestrial Odyssey which, from Lina Condes’s personal research, reaches out to the spectator: the artistic phenomenon here becomes a useful incentive towards a better and more complete self-knowledge.
And what is knowledge, if not the destination of the journey, the continuous striving towards the unknown or the unknowable? So if right from the start knowledge is the ultimate goal, what then urges us to action is in performing the action, where knowledge coincides with the action itself; knowledge finds itself in carrying out the search. Every scene, place, time and living creature that each Ulysses meets in the various stages of his journey are a source of knowledge. In this way, Lina Condes’s exhibition narrates the Odyssey of an unknown traveller, who cannot be identified unless in the Ulysses par excellence, who seeks a truth or truths outside the limits of the known world, beyond the columns of Hercules of our planet, in the dimension of an all-inclusive, extra-terrestrial universe, an Odyssey in space. Here every human desire to learn the Truth is symbolically concentrated in the figure of the mysterious “Sphinx”, the “monolith” of Lina Condes. At first sight the “Sphinx” is an aesthetic object, as it would ask us to upset the restraints of our categories of thought, but in the end it will allow us to revise these categories when faced with the wonder of the inexpressible, to abandon ourselves to the amazement of the unknown which, through the work of art, is presented as a symbol of a divine dimension. If we admit this, we must also conclude that, as long as man lives, it will be difficult for him to achieve a perfect knowledge of the mystery that surrounds him. It was Heidegger who saw in the aesthetic phenomenon the ability of the Absolute to be at the same time concealed and revealed in the complete knowledge of the mystery. So a real odyssey of knowledge awaits man who sets out to seek the Truth.
So ethics and aesthetics are combined, because in the centre of Lina Condes’s art there is always a tension towards the natural, primeval world, which man too frequently abandons, tramples and desecrates. Lina Condes looks inside Man and Nature: particles, atoms, infinite fragments of technologically studied matter, that are fused together to give perfect form to creation. In this way, all the elements come together, fusing in a cosmic embrace that is both mutual respect and a yearning for a dimension in which the rational, emotional and spiritual aspects can blend.
During the inauguration will be presented an artistic action to protect and safeguard the environment, with the participation of Daniel Lismore. 

Lina Condes was born in Cherkassy, Ukraine in 1988. She lives and works in Miami and Kiev.
She received her BA and her Masters in Design (Honors) from the Kyiv National University of Technologies and Design. A former contestant for the Miss Ukraine beauty pageant, Condes redirected her efforts towards art production and design with group projects during Ukrainian Art Week (Kiev), the MAGMART Film Festival (Naples), the Berlin Fashion Film Festival and OPEN, International Exhibition of Sculptures and Installations. Solo presentations of her work have been held at the M17 Contemporary Art Centre (Kiev), SV Gallery (Beirut), and with Avant Gallery (Miami) for the 2016 edition of the SCOPE Art Fair.   
Inauguration: Friday 12th May at 6.30 pm     

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