The recently unveiled “Struktura” (Structure) Gallery will host by March 10^th the exhibition of Adriana Chernin entitled “Deviations”. One can see brand new works there, created exclusively for the gallery’s space. “It really inspired me with its architectural completeness. On one hand it is a gallery and on the other – an industrial hall, situated in the heart of Sofia. When I saw that I felt that I had to create things designed exclusively for that space,” the author says.

Adriana Chernin is born in Sofia. In 1997 she graduated from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. She lives and works there now. Adriana has had her own exhibitions in Linz, Vienna, Cologne, Wiesbaden, Krems, Bohn, Paris and at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in the USA. She works with the prestigious Raum aktueller Kunst Martin Janda Gallery in Vienna.

The current “Deviations” exhibition displays the focus of the author’s creativity on an ornament, originating from the Arab architecture. Here is more from Adriana herself:

“Four years ago the Vienna MAK Museum for Applied Arts asked me to take a look at an original minbar fragment from a Cairo-based mosque. A minbar is the pulpit in the mosque where the imam (prayer leader) stands to deliver sermons. The ornament was dated back to the 13^th c. In the 19^th c. the entire building was demolished and different parts of it went to West European collections. Some of these parts could be found at Vienna’s MAK. I was invited to see the ornament as over the previous two years I had dealt with that type of geometric ornaments. What I was interested in at first was the missing grid of that piece. I tried to restore it to its original outlook.”

Adriana used to work in the sphere of video and graphic art before. Later on she focused mainly on the second genre. “A drawing and a picture are both static media. The viewer is the one who discovers new and newer aspects,” the author explains.

Chernin works with this particular ornament in this exhibition. “Although it’s magnificent, this fragment cannot be split. Each point depends on another, as well as each line on any other, and that is why I haven’t involved it into relations with other elements,” the artist explains. Her works are in pencil, watercolor and acrylic on paper. The exhibition also displays sketches, provoking endless analysis options.

The Self-portrait work, also part of this collection, is a resume of the entire composition. Ornament here is once again the fundament:

“That was my second self-portrait,” she says. “The common thing is that the face cannot be seen in both, and it is supposed to express the psychological state of the artist or her outlook. The body is dressed up in a shirt, built up by this same ornament. The background has also been created in the style of the same grid. On the place where the face is supposed to be there is this quasi sculptural form, also depicted by elements from the ornament and leaving this 3D impression. The hidden meaning of the portrait to some degree is its author, lost in the ornament.”

At the moment Adriana is working on her next exhibition at the MAK museum, where her works will be displayed by the original fragment from Cairo. There will be a wall drawing with the original parts installed in it, so that the idea of the ornament to become visible.

English version: Zhivko Stanchev