Croy Nielsen

Darja Bajagic and Aleksander Hardashnakov

01 May - 13 Jun 2015

© Aleksander Hardashnakov
In The Head, In The Fire, 2015
chalk pastel, colored pencil and latex primer on white felt
46 x 61 cm
Portrait of a young native girl who was Kicked down a flight of stairs at a residential school by a nun and died, 2015
chalk pastel, colored pencil and latex primer on white felt
46 x 61 cm
DARJA BAJAGIC AND ALEKSANDER HARDASHNAKOV
Softer Than Stone And Sick In Your Mind
1 May - 13 June 2015

A skeleton parodies human happiness by playing a hurdy-gurdy while the wheels of his cart crush a man. A woman has fallen in the path of the death cart; she holds in her hand a spindle and distaff, classical symbols of the fragility of human life. The slender thread is about to be cut by the scissors in her other hand. Just below her a cardinal is helped towards his fate by a skeleton who mockingly wears the red hat, while a dying king's barrel of gold coins is looted by yet another skeleton. In one detail, a dinner has been broken up and the diners are putting up a futile resistance. They have drawn their swords in order to fight the skeletons dressed in winding-sheets; no less hopelessly, the jester takes refuge beneath the dinner table. The backgammon board and the playing cards have been scattered, while a skeleton thinly disguised with a mask empties away the wine flasks. Above, a woman is being embraced by a skeleton in a hideous parody of after-dinner amorousness. Of the menu of the interrupted meal, all that can be seen are a few pallid rolls of bread and an appetizer apparently consisting of a pared human skull. As the fighting breaks out, a skeleton in a hooded robe mockingly seems to bring another dish, also consisting of human bones, to the table.

Darja Bajagic (b. 1990 in Titograd, Yugoslavia) lives and works in New York. Bajagi? studied at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland and at the Yale University School of Art, New Haven. Her work was included in Private Settings: Art After The Internet, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Warsaw (2014). Recent solo shows include C6ld C6mf6rt at Room East, New York.

Alesander Hardashnakov (b. 1982 in Toronto, Canada) lives and works in New York and Toronto. Recent solo shows include Tomorrow Gallery, New York and Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels (both 2015). Recent group shows include DOOM : SURFACE Contrôle, Le Magasin, Grenoble and From whose ground heaven and hell compare, Croy Nielsen, Berlin (both 2014).
 

Tags: Darja Bajagić, Aleksander Hardashnakov