BOZHINOV/RICCI: IBEG YOU TO HEAR ME

6 - 28 May 2011

dalla Rosa Gallery is pleased to present I Beg You To Hear Me, a multi-media compendium based on the lives and works of Russian writers active during the 1920s and 1930s.
 
Kiril Bozhinov and Francesca Ricci have combined reproductions of pocket-sized portraits, comic strip panels and voice recordings, with the aim of 'translating' into a visual, spoken and written tableaux, the unique voices of the individual writers.
 

The variety of written compositions – from the deeply lyrical symbolist poetry of Alexander Blok to the short, satirical stories of Mikhail Zoshchenko – is rendered through intense and contrasting colour schemes and collages of words, meanings and onomatopoetic sounds.


The project has been developed over a number of years, words and visuals are a product of accumulation as Francesca Ricci states: "These faces have been living with us for many years, like some kind of distant relatives. Of most of them I knew nothing or very little, of some I had read pages, of others I was fed information, briefed on episodes of their lives, or outlined their personality – as one does flicking through the pages of an extended family album. I learnt their names and on the knowledge I picked up along the way – or lacked – I painted over their black and white silhouettes as to give them the bolder appearance and louder voice of an instinctive new narrative: the life story we give ourselves within the waves and knots of history, through the absorbing of our experiences, the hurricanes of love and loss, the bliss of friendship and art; all that excites us, all we endure."

About the Artists

Kiril Bozhinov worked as music journalist for a number of Eastern European publications. He wrote and co-directed Chichikov and the Big-Nosed Devil, a play based on Russians satirical short stories. His first collection of short stories Eclipses – Stories of Disappearances and Reappearances was published in 2008.

Francesca Ricci lives and works in London. In 2005 she co-founded the independent art magazine, Interlude, and is now co-editor of 20x20 magazine. Recent exhibitions and projects include 20x20 magazine: Collected Visions (Madame Lillie’s), agency@theAgency (The Agency Gallery), Art/Value/Currency (The Pigeon Wing).