review - 13 may 2016 aleksandra domanovi...

Frieze, May 2016

5/21/16, 12:46 PMAleksandra Domanović | Frieze

of 8https://www.frieze.com/article/aleksandra-domanovic

E D I T O R I A L O N V I E W FA I R S V I D E O A C A D E M Y !"#

L O G I N

R E V I E W - 1 3 M AY 2 0 1 6

AleksandraDomanovićB Y K I R S T Y B E L L

Tanya Leighton, Berlin, Germany

A rash of photography shows opened across Berlin for this year’s5/21/16, 12:46 PMAleksandra Domanović | Frieze

Page 2 of 8https://www.frieze.com/article/aleksandra-domanovic

Gallery Weekend, including one by Aleksandra Domanović who is

better known for her futuristic sculptures. Occupying both sites of

Tanya Leighton Gallery, Domanović’s ‘Bulls Without Horns’ pairs two

disparate bodies of work. In the smaller of the two spaces, a trio of

person-sized sculptures – somewhere between ancient Greek votive

statues and cyborg post-humans – builds on the artist’s recent

sculptures of 3D-printed, robotically articulated hands and arms.

But in the gallery across the road, a series of large-scale

photographic prints – glossy depictions of farmyard scenes starring

two photogenic black and white cows – seems wilfully at odds with

both her work to date and the sculptures they accompany.

Aleksandra Domanović, Bulls Without Horns: Alison With the Bulls, 2016, Diasec

mounted c-type print, 1.5 x 2 m. All images courtesy: the artist and Tanya Leighton,

Berlin

There is something off-kilter about the images, despite their slick



E D I T O R I A L O N V I E W FA I R S V I D E O A C A D E M Y !"#

L O G I N

R E V I E W - 1 3 M AY 2 0 1 6

AleksandraDomanovićB Y K I R S T Y B E L L

Tanya Leighton, Berlin, Germany

A rash of photography shows opened across Berlin for this year’s


of 8https://www.frieze.com/article/aleksandra-domanovic

Gallery Weekend, including one by Aleksandra Domanović who is

better known for her futuristic sculptures. Occupying both sites of

Tanya Leighton Gallery, Domanović’s ‘Bulls Without Horns’ pairs two

disparate bodies of work. In the smaller of the two spaces, a trio of

person-sized sculptures – somewhere between ancient Greek votive

statues and cyborg post-humans – builds on the artist’s recent

sculptures of 3D-printed, robotically articulated hands and arms.

But in the gallery across the road, a series of large-scale

photographic prints – glossy depictions of farmyard scenes starring

two photogenic black and white cows – seems wilfully at odds with

both her work to date and the sculptures they accompany.

Aleksandra Domanović, Bulls Without Horns: Alison With the Bulls, 2016, Diasec

mounted c-type print, 1.5 x 2 m. All images courtesy: the artist and Tanya Leighton,

Berlin

There is something off-kilter about the images, despite their slick5/21/16, 12:46 PMAleksandra Domanović | Frieze


presentation. In one, a close-up of a cow’s furry hide is being

lathered with soap; in another, a woman in shiny leather boots

parades the animals towards the camera. These are no ordinary

cows; they are the titular ‘bulls without horns’: Spotigy and Buri, the

first two such genetically devised specimens. The photographs are

seeded with clues to the unusual provenance and meaning of their

subjects – a strategy typical for Domanović, whereby the works

seem part of a sequence of references to be unravelled, leading to a

deeper body of research. The documentary format she adopted for

the 2013–14 film From .yu to .me, about the rise of the internet and

concurrent dissolution of her native Yugoslavia, has since given way

to object making. But her research-oriented approach remains the

same, its information now translated into three dimensions.

Domanović herself often appears obliquely, introducing a splinter of

subjectivity. In one of the photographs we see her crouching in the

foreground, directing the photo shoot but trying to stay out of shot

(Bulls without Horns: Making Of, all works 2016). This self-conscious

chink demonstrates the artist’s role as an interloping presence but

also the director and crafter of narrative.



Aleksandra Domanović, Bulls Without Horns: Making Of, 2016, Diasec mounted c-

type print, 1.1 x 1.5 m

The show’s elliptical nature sent me groping for a press text, which

proves a vital source of information: a transcription of an interview

between the artist and animal geneticist Alison Van Eenennaam,

responsible for Spotigy and Buri’s genetic alteration. Punctuated

with a sci-fi vocabulary of alleles, nucleotides and CRISPR (the

‘Model T of Genetics’), the interview plots the direction of the

artist’s research. The point is not the scientific developments in and

of themselves, but rather their intersection with Domanović’s

ongoing interests – the role of women in scientific advancement, the

infiltration of economics into biology, the ethical component of

genetic advancement, and the ways our material environment

comes to be determined by all of these things.



Aleksandra

Domanović,

Votive:

Partridge, 2016,

laser sintered PA

plastic,

polyurethane,

Soft-Touch,

aluminium,

copper and

Kevlar-carbon

fibre coating,

Corian and

foam, 176 x 63 x

38 cm

The question remains, however, how the photographed cows relate

to the elegant sculptures derived from classical votive figures from

the Greek island of Samos. The latter’s slick combinations of

materials and robotics contrasts with the stasis of their classical

poses and the spiritual offerings they make. One pair of arms holds

a hare; the second a bird; and the third a pomegranate, a reference

to Hera, the ancient Greek goddess of women and marriage. The

checklist of high-tech materials, like ‘laser sintered PA plastic’, is

equally important. Stone carving becomes 3D printing, marble is



Aleksandra

Domanović,

Votive:

Partridge, 2016,

laser sintered PA

plastic,

polyurethane,

Soft-Touch,

aluminium,

copper and

Kevlar-carbon

fibre coating,

Corian and

foam, 176 x 63 x

38 cm

The question remains, however, how the photographed cows relate

to the elegant sculptures derived from classical votive figures from

the Greek island of Samos. The latter’s slick combinations of

materials and robotics contrasts with the stasis of their classical

poses and the spiritual offerings they make. One pair of arms holds

a hare; the second a bird; and the third a pomegranate, a reference

to Hera, the ancient Greek goddess of women and marriage. The

checklist of high-tech materials, like ‘laser sintered PA plastic’, is

equally important. Stone carving becomes 3D printing, marble is



Aleksandra

Domanović,

Votive:

Pomegranate,

2016, laser

sintered PA

plastic,

polyurethane,

Soft-Touch,

aluminium and

Kevlar-carbon

fibre coating,

Corian and

foam, 176 x 63 x

40 cm

replaced by Kevlar-carbon-fibre coating. These sculptures are all

about a dynamic process of updating: their columnar bodies are

even stamped with the artist’s initials: ‘AD’ updating the originals’

BC provenance. Seen in this light, the cows, as genetically edited

products, become another material, and the photographs the most

literal and descriptive means of presenting them.

The trail of clues in Domanović’s work does not necessarily suggest a

rounded narrative, a la Simon Starling, but rather leaves ends

hanging, or paths opened up. It reflects the nature of internet-



driven meanderings, the coincidental routes of subjective enquiry,

where accessibility enables the self-generation of narratives, for

good or for bad. The intersections of science and history that

Domanović’s work describes are always explicitly individual, human

endeavours – and these, despite their post-human manifestations,

are what the artist is seeking.

A L E K S A N D R A D O M A N O V IĆ T A N YA L E I G H T O N

B E R L I N R E V I E W K I R S T Y B E L L

K I R ST Y B E L L

Kirsty Bell is a freelance writer and contributing editor of frieze and

frieze d/e. She is author of The Artist’s House published in 2013 by

Sternberg Press.

London1 MontclareStreetLondonE2 7EU, UK+44 (0)203372 6111

New York247 Centre St5th FloorNew York, NY10013+1 212 4637488

BerlinZehdenickerStr. 28D-10119 BerlinGermany+49 30 23626506



Aleksandra

Domanović,

Votive:

Pomegranate,

2016, laser

sintered PA

plastic,

polyurethane,

Soft-Touch,

aluminium and

Kevlar-carbon

fibre coating,

Corian and

foam, 176 x 63 x

40 cm












Aleksandra

Domanović,

Votive:

Pomegranate,

2016, laser

sintered PA

plastic,

polyurethane,

Soft-Touch,

aluminium and

Kevlar-carbon

fibre coating,

Corian and

foam, 176 x 63 x

40 cm










review - 13 may 2016 aleksandra domanovi...

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