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"LIUBA" - "LIUBA" - "LIUBA" - "LIUBA"

www.liuba.net

WEISSPOLLACK GALLERIES
521 West 25th street
ground floor # 9
New York NY 10001

presents
PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release

LIUBA

Chelsea sabotage

curated by Irina Zucca Alessandrelli

March 9, 2006 – April 8, 2006

Opening Reception: Thursday, March 16, 2006, 6:00- 9:00 P.M.

On March 16, 2006 WEISSPOLLACK Galleries is pleased to present the first solo show by performance and video artist Liuba in New York.

Liuba is a young Italian artist who slips into the art world mechanisms to tease it and its protagonists through ironic performances. In this solo show she presents videos of the actions she did during the Venice Biennial (2003), the Italian Bologna Art Fair (2004) and the SOFA Fair in New York (2005).

In the series called Virus the artist is a sort of living sculpture. Dressed in a black outfit with red dots , the notorious sold stickers, the artist went to art fairs placing them under several works under the noses of upset gallerists and stunned visitors. The sold dot is a universal sign that makes the difference. You judge a work in another way if it has been sold. Red dot means, money, eventually power and sometimes fame. The same performance in Bologna (Italy) and in New York has extremely different results. Liuba's main interest in doing this provocative performance is the social aspect of the reactions, a sort of anthropological point of view. The audience's reaction, in fact, gives an immediate shot of a country, a people and its issues. At the SOFA, Liuba generated such angry reactions, that she was forced by the Show Management to leave the fair. The ironic aspect of this strong reaction is that security guards spent at least 20 minutes explaining to her what the red dots mean in the U.S., then they pushed her out, confiscating her cameraman's ID and passport, "because people pay for having a booth and people pay for visiting the fair," as they kept repeating in the video. They could not even imagine that she was sticking red dots on purpose – to the security staff she was a silly woman acting pointlessly. In Italy the gallerists at the fair were really annoyed by her, but it was clear to everybody that she was joking with the art system and it made her actions generally enjoyable. Liuba's works are based on the direct comparison between the artist and the audience, the live performance and the recorded video, the rules and the illegal. (Irina Zucca Alessandrelli)

For further information and/or images of Liuba work, please contact David Pollack at 212.989.3708 or email David at weisspollack@att.net.

www.liuba.net