Alexandre Bavard (aka MOSA) is an Paris-based artist with Georgian origin hosted at Avantgarden Gallery in Milan for his new exhibition curated by Manfredi Bonelli Bonetti e Francesca Holsenn. Multifaceted and versatile, he plays with different materials and brackets, transforming the space in a complex dystopian game.

The artworks are different in nature and form: informal canvas paintings with a particular technique called bleach or a complex agglomerate of fish nets, which forming a dense texture, make the space fragmented. Scattered, different objects found in the Milan periphery that the artist himself chooses and watches, like headphones, resin and concrete sculptures and even a lit fireplace, are the witnesses of a far future, a sort of underground ready- made with waste items.

Bavard define this lost world, westeland, a half world, where the time doesn’t exist, the environment is suspended, all our holds to identify space with a familiar urban place are lost; everything is wrapped in a chaos of fragments, objects and images, which emphasize the sense of lost. There is nothing left of human and his passage but anthropomorphic sculptures, a petrified monument in which the body has dissolved, leaving the place to consumer items, what remains of our anthropocentric production.

The spectator enters inside the work, walking through the exhibition like an apocalyptic labyrinth, a forgotten city, an archaeological site, where there aren’t ancient finds but symbols of our indiscriminate production of assets like rims, clothes, plastic and toys. We are the explorers of a hypothetical dystopian future. The Milanese gallery has always hosted street culture artists like Bavard. The artist has always used tags as a means of expression bearing the mark of the underground writer within a more articulated and complex discourse.

The day before opening the performance Bulky took place, curated by Sofia Baldi, in collaboration with Lobo, a multidisciplinary laboratory formed by artists and psychologists, born fromVirginia Roghi, for years researcher of underground culture. The space is activated by the passage of the performers, that entering into relationship with the ruins, reflect on the meaning of living in the city, marked by the collective fear derived from the pandemic and the need for cultural and social rehabilitation.

The characters protest for their right to belong in the world. Generating spaces of meeting the body motion, they place themselves as bearers of the will of union and social cohesion, more imminent than ever in this period of difficulty and insecurity. Metropolitan sub-culture and therefore the desire to break the division of minority categories, is expressed through the dance of a performer which symbolizes the movement generated by the tags, urban art present in our cities, using choreographies in rhythm of techno sonority performed live by Mace (Simone Benussi). The exhibition represents the leak, degradation. The mappings of our present doesn’t exist anymore, what remains is fragments of humanity that has dissolved, leaving only the furnishings used to remedy our shortcomings. The tribe that inhabits this desolated land asks the upcoming question of a new social union producing space for cultural thought.

Ljuba Ciaramella

Info:

Performance, People of ruins, on 29.10.2020, by Lobo group, curated by Sofi Baldi
Alexandre Bavard (aka MOSA) – Acid Bleach
curated by Manfredi Brunelli Bonetti e Francesca Holsenn
30.10.2020 – 27.11.2020
Avantgarden Gallery
Via Tertulliano 68, Milano