60 seconds party
60 seconds party – 2022
with Alina Melnikova
Installation – mixed media, variable dimensions
A gallery display window in Belgrade downtown was converted into an open experimental room where one could listen to music, dance, draw or just watch the passers-by for 10 days. We usually start their interaction with the space by looking into stereotypes related to the place and play around with its visual appearances and contradictions. This time our focus slid on Belgrade hyperactive life which is boiling in alternative art centers or clubs in the suburbs and on floating boats on the Danube river. We invited the visitors to perform for 60 seconds in the space covered with foam and graffiti replicas they found visiting these places. Tags and signs drawn on the gallery window, like scratches on the surface of the buildings, create a thin net that connects them to each other.
The structure of the space was naturally influenced by the uncovering procedure. Emptying the vitrine we found a bunch of randomly saved building materials which organically composed themselves into a rhythmical base of the place inside the gallery. The whole installation consists of two conceptual parts. The center of it is a vitrine. Its structure echoes the architectonic view of the city. A column inside is a ready-made sculpture wrapped in foam. This material smoothens the angles and absorbs the sound. On the other hand, it reminds inside-out of the furniture and a sponge. The subtly falling down curtain that reveals and veils the inside content.
The synthesis of revealing and veiling is soaked into various layers of this installation.
Alina Melnikova & Fabrizio Contarino are two visual artists based in Barcelona, working together in design, sculpture and painting. They use a collectively engaging process to create installations and performances combining these mediums. The starting point of their work is a hybrid collection of visual material, found or produced that they mix, manipulate and transform. They constantly deal with visual memory related to pop culture.