This May until early July Erarta Galleries Zurich will feature the exhibition I Believe in Angels presenting a unique project by renowned artist Dmitry Shorin. His artwork is being exhibited and is on permanent display at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art and The State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. Additionally, this young star`s acclaimed work has been auctioned throughout the world at major international auction houses such as Sotheby’s and Phillips.

The project I Believe in Angels consists of twelve life-sized sculptures and has started its global tour at Art Palm Beach and Art Paris Art Fair. Before unveiling further pieces at the Venice Biennale and final Erarta destinationsin St. Petersburg, New York, London and Hong Kong, Zurich has the honor of showcasing one of these captivating masterpieces as the focal point of an exhibition dedicated to the œuvre of Dmitry Shorin represented by a selection of some of his finest paintings from all of his major series. A catalogue with an accompanying essay by respected writer and critic Edward Lucie Smith will be produced as part of the project.

Debating the concept of progress and the limits of the human body in the digital age, I Believe in Angels is Erarta’s latest joint project with the artist. According to Shorin, “Man has long coveted the ability to fly, but the faster and farther we travel, the more we must look to the angels for direction. Though ostensibly capable of high-speed travel, my angels are frozen in a moment of daily routine – a contradiction.” Well known for his paintings, Shorin has retained his signature voyeur’s gaze in these sculptures however, the reckless joie de vivre of his painting practice is here superseded by the seduction of the possibility of flight. Shown engaged in familiar everyday routines, Shorin`s girls seem frozen in time, as if the speed of the technology upon which we depend and the physical burden of the heavy airplane wings has rendered them immobile.

Shorin`s paintings are easily recognized- not only because of the recurring themes of girls, planes and sky, but due to a characteristic atmosphere of uneasiness and psychological eroticism. Shorin borrows his images of washed-out glam-beauties from the inexhaustible sources of mass media and breathes a new life into them. Stripped of the advertising obviousness, fragile heroines become ephemeral and mysterious beings both appealing and obscene at the same time.

In exploring definitions of beauty and the transcendental power of the feminine, Shorin assigns guardianship to womankind. In today`s age when speed is more important than physical strength, the artist gives an angel her wings in the most modern sense. Shorin looks to mass media images and revises clichéd ideals in mythical terms, placing the woman at the center of our evolution as a species. In the assimilation of the industrial and the corporal, Shorin presents to the world a guardian angel for the information age.

Erarta Galleries
Gerbergasse 6
Zürich CH 8001 Switzerland
Ph. +41 (0)43 3446040
zurich@erartagalleries.com
www.erartagalleries.com

Opening hours
Tuesday - Friday from 10am to 6pm
Saturday from 11am to 5pm