Alina Kunitsyna I Le Bain of Love

The bath of love. All beings, human as non-human, but also plants or minerals, all created objects, as well as virtual beings and all thoughts or figurations, do reveal themselves, and truly testify to their state, in and through their relationship to others. 

A relationship that may be random too, when not impermanent at times, but these existences it creates are never totally detached, marginal or alien: they always remain the product of a differential, a reminiscence that haunts them. This is why they cannot be denounced or stigmatised without being negated or harmed even.

As all these beings produce signs and also engender multiplicities of forms with which they take their bent, thus composing the score of their presence in order to enter into communion with each other. The Bath of love that brings them together is then as much a state of affairs as an amniotic baptism in which affinities melt and grow before being abandoned, when they do not remember, invent and confront each other in order to forget all about it later. Never can they really be framed.

Certainly, this bath remains lustral by nature: it is the ritual of purification and renewal. But, above all, its eternal return invites us to: "… put ourselves back into the duration in order to recapture reality in the mobility that is its essence." (H. Bergson). In this, all the ambiguity of the correspondences that he brings into the world becomes apparent. Thus, there is no despicable or even hateful form, but a continuum where the plasticity of beings inspires meditation and mediation. It calls too for the recognition of the infinity of our imaginations caught up in the net of all the others that surround, inhabit, and confuse us. Thus, can we ever get out of the Bath...?

 

Ralf Marsault

 

 

 

 

Alina Kunitsyna (b.1981 in Minsk, Belarus) lives and works in Vienna and Damtschach, Austria. She studied at Lycee of Art, Minsk and the University of Art and Design, Linz, graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna in 2007. During her time in Minsk, Kunitsyna studied the still lives of the Renaissance period, both the theoretical and practical extensively. These artworks contained precious objects like orthodox garments, ancient decanters or featured vanitas motifs. The imitation of this époque made an experience that laid the foundation for her practice. Today Kunitsyna seeks inspiration in current pop culture, everyday life and art history combining these elements in the context of capricious jokes and allegories that capture the bewilderment of contemporary life.

 

Kunitsyna's recent solo exhibitions include: ‘Helium Ecstasy’, Galerie Kandlhofer, Vienna, 2019; 'Flux-Time', Museum moderner Kunst Kärnten, 2018; ’Simple Present’, Galerie3, Klagenfurt, 2018, ’In The Fold', Galerie Kandlhofer, Vienna, 2017.

 

Recent group shows include: Alina Kunitsyna und Markus Orsini-Rosenberg, Galerie Freihausgasse, 2023, Coda, Galerie Schloss Damatsch, 2022, BKS Sammlung, Stadtgalerie Klagenfurt,  2022, Zeit und Mensch, Wirtschaftskammer Klagenfurt, 2021, FREUNDE…des Gustav Moreau Museums…, Galerie Schloss Damatsch, 2021, Schau…8, Kunsthalle Kollitsch, Klagenfurt, 2022, Coppla Coronale, Galerie Vorspann, Bad Eisenkappel, 2020; 'There is no clock in the forest’, Galerie Schloss Damtschach, Damtschach, 2019; 'Shifts in Time’, Over the Influence, Los Angeles, 2019; '2. Törn’, Galerie 3, Velden am Wörthersee, 2019; 'Women In Print', Galeriekrems, Krems, 2019; '1. Törn’, Galerie 3, Velden am Wörthersee, 2019;