the hell. the heaven. on the way. in between.

ifa gallery is pleased to present the group exhibition “the hell. the heaven. on the way. inbetween.” curated by Zane Mellupe.

“There are known ‘knowns’. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don’t know.”
– Donald Rumsfeld (former United States Secretary of Defense) –

The conscious and unconscious are where we create our hells (what is the worst thing that can happen to you?) and our heavens (what is the best thing that can happen to you?). We set the rules for today, yesterday and tomorrow; for the hells and heavens we wish to go to.

While descriptions of hell in art have always been rather splendid, heaven like many indescribable things, through describing, turns out to be a bit banal. It is what we make of it and not what is given. We may keep in mind reference images of Buddhist drawings and descriptions by Dante and Bosch, but what do we see ourselves?

The hell. The heaven. On the way. In between. is an introductory exhibition for two exhibitions in progress – Hell and Heaven.
This exhibition aims to question the contemporary interpretations and visualizations of the world by Zhang Xianyong, the 10 commandments by Christin Kalweit, sins by Xu Yihan and Chen Weide, doubt by Zane Mellupe, purgatory by Roland Darjes, heaven by Zhu Ye and Dai Guangyu and hell by Shao Shao and Liu Bo.

Zane Mellupe, curator

9, 1 BH (AD 28 April, 2011)