Productive

The centrepiece of the exhibition is the painting LOVE WANT ISSUE 21 / The Virgin and Child by Giovanni Bellini from Daniel Spivakov’s Combinations Series. In this work, Spivakov juxtaposes a Bellini painting of Virgin Mary and Jesus (The Virgin and Child from the National Gallery, London) with a Cartier advertisement from Issue 21 of the magazine LOVE WANT, featuring a model covering her breasts with a flower (a white hydrangea). Both images have been ruthlessly cropped and manipulated. In the Bellini painting, the Virgin’s face, the entirety of the Christ child, and the marble parapet at the bottom of the painting have been cut out of the work, leaving only Mary’s left arm and a glimpse of the Italian landscape in the background. On the other side, the Cartier model’s face is covered in an exuberant, though carefully arranged, explosion of colour, featuring turquoise, white, and pink. As neither the biblical reference nor the fashion reference is recognisable, Spivakov provides a metaphor for a time in which a cacophony of images and stimuli lead to information breakdown. While one can detect marks and elements of figuration, the ultimate subject-matter is overdetermined. 

The same method of appropriation and ruthless intervention is also witnessed in the seven works on paper on view at Martin Schlombs. Spivakov tore pages from art monographs by artists he admirers – such as Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Cy Twombly and Joseph Beuys – and subsequently altered the works through painterly interventions and printed condoms. Aside from providing an allegory of contemporary culture, Spivakov uses appropriation in his work to sit at a table with the artists he admirers.

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✍️ Martin S.