Local Artist Shows in the Galleria UPP, in Italy.

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Dmitri Obergfell is a graduate of Palisade High School.  He was always thinking and creating these ideas into art forms. When seeing his work in my classes, I always noted how different his perception of ways to express himself were and how original. I hope that this show in Italy will spur his career on to many levels and to many viewers. Good luck to Dmitri in all he does!

 

DMITRI OBERGFELL | The Visigoths | galleria upp

 

Dmitri Obergfell, The Visigoths curated by Marco Tagliafierro

galleria upp, Venice, 16 March – 11 May 2013

Opening: 16 March at 18.00

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Dmitri Obergfell, The Visigoths curated by Marco Tagliafierro galleria upp, Venice, 16 March – 11 May 2013 Opening: 16 March at 18.00 --galleria upp of Venice is pleased to present The Visigoths, the  first solo exhibition in Italy of Dmitri Obergfell (Denver, 1986), curated  by Marco Tagliafierro. Through a series of sculptures, reproductions of busts chosen from among the cliché of classical statues, the show presents a metaphorical incursion, forced erosion that traces a culture’s depletion and becomes emblematic of necessary  change. The young artist made nine plaster and graphite busts for this show.  They are not  exact replicas of the major references of western sculptural production  inasmuch  as they are reproduction of reproductions: a violent coercion to  repetition that  paradoxically accelerates the process of taking distance from the  classical archetype.  Obergfell falls into the vertiginous cycle of transcriptions of the  “original” to which  the entire West clings, attempting to ground itself in the ever  more evanescent  memory of its past splendor. Beginning by treating these statues  as souvenirs or  kitsch schlock, Obergfell ends up presenting already depreciated  ‘signs,’ shadows  of themselves, imitations of fake originals. But the research doesn’t  stop here, liable  to interface with what Gillo Dorfles has already sufficiently explored. Obergfell’s act, a partial annulment of the constitutive features of  these sculptural  “replicants”—closed mute systems that have lost their  communicative function—,  attempts to open a breach in the shut and self-referential  system these artifacts  express. Obergfell uses his sculptures like chalk on a  blackboard, to create the space  around them, and finally, then, puts them back on pedestals.  Now brutally mutilated,  these figures no longer suffer from neglect, if not that of a lazy  eye whose negligence  no longer contemplates art and makes statues also die  (a quote dear to the artist leading  directly to the title of Alain Resnais and Chris Marker’s  documentary). Dmitri Obergfell, The Visigoths a cura di Marco Tagliafierro galleria upp, Venezia, 16 marzo – 11 maggio 2013 Opening: 16 marzo, h. 18.00 -- La galleria upp di Venezia è lieta di presentare The Visigoths,  prima personale  in Italia di Dmitri Obergfell (Denver,1986), a cura di Marco  Tagliafierro.  Attraverso una serie di sculture,che sono riproduzioni di busti  selezionati  tra i clichè della statuaria classica, la mostra propone una  metaforica  incursione, un'erosione forzata che traccia l'esaurirsi di  una cultura e  diventa emblema di un cambiamento necessario.