ARTIST-TALK WITH VITALY KOMAR and POETRY READING BY ANNA HALBERSTADT




 
The gallery organized an artist-talk with the artist Vitaly Komar in conjunction with the exhibition DOUBLE APOCALYPSE or DOUBLE REVELATION, a series which reflects the art-duo’s Komar & Melamid’s interest in religious images and concepts and showcases “the contradictory relationship between Apocalyptic images and texts of various times with post-revolutionary folk mythological beliefs; for example, beliefs in tyrants, such as Stalin, being an embodiment of Anti-Messiah/Anti-Christ and hastening the end of the world”, as Vitaly Komar described it in his talk. Q & A session turned into an exciting philosophical panel discussion with participation of Vitaly and the guests. Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid are considered as some of world’s major post-modern artists. They are included in the 100 Best Artists of the XX Century (Editions Hazan) and have participated in such major world art events as the Venice Biennale (several times), Documenta (Kassel), and Sydney Biennale.

Anna Halberstadt, a poet and Vitaly’s wife, was reading a few poems on Conversations with God. Anna has published many works in the field of psychology but has found poetry to be a more adequate and condensed way to expand on the same themes -growing up as a child of Holocaust survivors in Lithuania, a country still struggling with past trauma – and living later in Russia and the United States. Halberstadt is a member of American PEN Centre and an author of such poetry collections as Vilnius Diary and Transit. In 2016 she received the Merit Award in Poetry from the Atlanta Review. As a translator, Anna has collaborated, to a great success, with Eileen Myles, an American literary icon.

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