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Contemporary Art Gallery

555 Nelson Street
Vancouver, Canada
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ArchiveExhibition
18 Jan 19until24 Mar 19

Aslan Gaisumov

If No One Asks

Alvin Balkind Gallery

An image of a blue carpeted room filled with rows of chairs. A large photograph of a cityscape fills the back wall. Windows line the left wall, two doors are on the right. Both have ornate drapery

Aslan Gaisumov, People of No Consequence (still), 2016. Courtesy the artist

If No One Asks marks the first solo presentation of Aslan Gaisumov’s work in North America. His artistic practice speculates on the entanglement of fictions and truth, the inaccessible with the present and the acknowledged with the lost. As expressive forms, his artworks — whether moving or still images, found objects or installations — consider the pressures withstood by bodies and things as witnesses to events.

Bringing together two works that have never been previously shown with one another, this exhibition offers a new way in which to consider many of the concerns that have shaped the artist’s practice over the past several years. Both artworks carry a story while simultaneously withholding it from view. Gaisumov’s work makes present both the stories and the silences that surround them, where the audience is given the responsibility of listener to images and witness to the witnesses.

Curated by Kimberly Phillips with assistance from Julia Lamare

Biography

Aslan Gaisumov was born in Chechnya in 1991. Recent solo exhibitions include Dark Shelters, Centre d’arts plastiques de Saint-Fons, Lyon (2018-19); Crystals and Shards, Kohta, Helsinki (2018); All That You See Here, Forget, Emalin, London (2018); People of No Consequence, Museum of Modern Art, Antwerp (2016); and Memory Belongs to the Stones, Zink Galerie, Berlin (2015). His work has also been featured in group exhibitions at Liverpool Biennial and the Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (2018); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, (2017); Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco (2017); and Akademie der Künste, Berlin (2016), among many others. In 2014, he was awarded the Special Prize of the Future Generation Art Prize of the Pinchuk Art Centre in Kiev, Ukraine, and in 2016 the Innovation Prize of the National Centre for Contemporary Arts in Moscow, Russia. He lives and works in Grozny and Amsterdam.

A short hallway leading into a gallery is depicted in this image. A blue-grey wall is visible at the end of this hallway. A small, two-dimensional framed artwork is installed on this wall.
A wooden frame hangs on a blue-grey wall. Mounted in the frame is a page from a book. The title of the page reads “WAR MEMORIES.” The rest of the page is redacted, excluding one word, “war.”
A large screen is installed in a darkened gallery displaying a projected single-channel video work. In the video, an older person with a white beard walks into a room filled with rows of chairs.
A large screen is displayed in a dark gallery. On the screen, a group of people sit facing the front of a large room. A person stands at the front of the room with their face turned away.

Documents

Program guidepdf1mbExhibition materialpdf1mb

Talks & Events

A wooden frame hangs on a blue-grey wall. Mounted in the frame is a page from a book. The title of the page reads “War Memories.” The rest of the page is redacted, excluding one word, “war.” EventTalkAslan Gaisumov
19 Jan 19·3:00 PM
An image of a blue carpeted room filled with rows of chairs. A large photograph of a cityscape fills the back wall. Windows line the left wall, two doors are on the right. Both have ornate drapery
A short hallway leading into a gallery is depicted in this image. A blue-grey wall is visible at the end of this hallway. A small, two-dimensional framed artwork is installed on this wall.
A wooden frame hangs on a blue-grey wall. Mounted in the frame is a page from a book. The title of the page reads “WAR MEMORIES.” The rest of the page is redacted, excluding one word, “war.”
A large screen is installed in a darkened gallery displaying a projected single-channel video work. In the video, an older person with a white beard walks into a room filled with rows of chairs.
A large screen is displayed in a dark gallery. On the screen, a group of people sit facing the front of a large room. A person stands at the front of the room with their face turned away.