The Ambiguous Lightness of Being - An Homage to Milan Kundera opens at Diana Lowenstein Gallery, Miami, FL, February 13-March 31, 2016

The Diana Lowenstein Gallery is pleased to present The Ambiguous Lightness of Being - An Homage to Milan Kundera, a group exhibition curated by Ombretta Agró Andruff, Diana Lowenstein Gallery's curatorial advisor. An opening reception will take place on:

Saturday February 13th, 7:00-9:30PM

The gallery will host a conversation with some of the participating artists and the curator prior to the opening reception,starting at 6:00PM. The exhibition will be on view through March 31st, 2016.

“The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?” 

Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

This exhibition, 14 years in the making, was first conceptualized in 2002. While it never came to fruition then, its concept lingered for a long time to resurface today as the project presented at Diana Lowenstein Gallery. The exhibition, as presented here, was triggered by re-reading Kundera's masterwork and by a series of encounters between the curator and several artists that took place over the last couple of years during travels throughout Eastern and Central Europe as well as Cuba.

The featured artworks encompass a wide variety of media and approaches, yet they are all somehow connected to the dichotomy of lightness and weight, either because of their ephemeral nature and real or apparent lightness, or weight, of the materials employed to create them, or because of their ability to address profoundly personal as well metaphysical issues and express them in subtle and poetic forms through their practices. 

Kundera, in response to the question noted in the excerpt above, tells us that Parmenides, the Greek philosopher who lived in the sixth century BCE, came to the conclusion that lightness is positive and weight negative. Kundera responds that "the only certainty is: the lightness/weight opposition is the most mysterious, most ambiguous of all". 

It is their ambiguous nature, in fact, the thin red line that connects the artists and artworks in the exhibition. 

List of participating artists: Apparatus 22, Jonathan Callan, Loris Cecchini, Michele Chiossi, Gye Hoon Park, Marya Kazoun, Jaroslav Kyša, Ronald Morán, Angelo Musco, Beatrice Pediconi, Marisabela Telleria, Xawery Wolski.

For additional images and/or information, please contact: info@dianalowensteingallery.com

This exhibition is supported by: "Associated Photo Imaging"

Diana Lowenstein Gallery | 2043 North Miami Avenue I Miami, FL 33127 I 305 - 576 - 1804 

www.dianalowensteingallery.com