Installation views I Vanessa Disler I Big Naturals I on view until 28. August

Installation view

Installation view

Installation view

BIG NATURALS is the banner for a loose group of paintings formatted to suggest doorways or coffins in today’s crypt, the mall. The paintings circle the space at Damien & The Love Guru in Brussels to form a cadence, acting as a Book of the Living, a wink to the Egyptian Book of the Dead, comprised of collectively written funerary texts and spells that would be placed in the coffin of the deceased to assist them into the afterlife. In this hypothetical Book of the Living, Vanessa Disler considers contemporary rites, such as botox or fillers using hyaluronic acid, as a kind of embalming for the living. Fragmented shapes conjure body parts, the messy feminine, and nature.

Read full exhibition text ‘Thirst Trap’ by Tiziana La Melia + documentation of ‘Big Naturals’ here

Margarita Maximova and Damien & The Love Guru invite you to a small pickle degustation Saturday 28. August from 6-8pm + marking the last day of Vanessa Disler’s solo exhibition ‘Big Naturals’ 

“My grandfather received a piece of land from the weapon factory he worked in. Everyone who received a minimum of six aches was obliged to work the soil. By the time I was five years old, I could understand how the cultivation worked. There were cherry trees and apple trees but also potatoes and lots of peonies. Berry bushes, gooseberries and many other [removed] plant that was loved the most was the pickle plant. There were lots of books on how to grow pickle plants, specifically on how to grow them in the area of Mid-Russia. My grandfather grew all sorts of pickles: big ones, small ones, bent ones, straight ones, smooth ones and even pickles with humps. Different tastes were noted. Sometimes they were bitter or neutral, sometimes they were watery or sweet and sometimes they were bittersweet.
When I was a little girl, I didn’t understand how these books about pickles were allowed to stand next to the books of Fenimore Cooper. Or Thomas Mayne-Reid, Mark Twain, Roger Martin Du Gard or Emile Zola. In the springtime, the windowsills were filled with milk packages that had been cut in half, housing the growing pickles. Salted pickles were kept in glass jars throughout the winters. Our flat was so crammed with them, they even stood underneath our beds. If the jars were not sterilised properly, the glass would explode. In the summer mornings, I would find my grandfather standing in his shorts, watering the pickle plants with a hose. This image of my grandfather always remained with me. It was very important for the third leaf of the pickle plant to sprout; it was a sign that the plant was healthy. When I started to grow them too, I told my niece in Moscow. She solemnly asked if the third leaves had began to show. It was so special and I wondered, if she also had a grandfather like [removed]#8221;

⏤ excerpt of Margarita Maximova’s upcoming publication ‘YOU HAVE WITHIN YOU SOMETHING STRONGER AND MORE NUMINOUS’
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Launching end of October at Saint-Martin Bookshop, Brussels
More info soon !

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