2 February 2021 – 12 PM SLT
Opening party of the February exhibition at Nitroglobus
“AMERICAN SHOT, PART II” by Milena Carbone
Music set by DJ Ish (Traci)
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery teleport
“Nitroglobus presents PART II of the meaningful and provoking exhibition ‘American Shot’ in which Milena Carbone takes us by the hand and shows us the decay of the Western Empires in 28 images of which the second batch of 14 pieces will be shown in February.
Moreover, Milena also made a book of this exhibition in which not only all 28 images are presented but also the story she wrote ‘Greatness again and Decadence’. You will find the book on the table at the café.
I urge you to take a look, it’s an impressive story. When you buy the book you will receive a copy in the world.
Please read Inara Pey’s blog post for a thorough analysis/review of Part I of this exhibition
My thanks go to David Silence, who made the poster for this exhibition.”
The exhibition explained by Milena
“The American shot is a shot framed from the character’s mid-waist to right above their head. It is characteristic of American movies of the first half of the 20th century, at the dawn of cinema, and of the American empire.
For this exhibition about the greatness and decadence of civilizations, and in particular of the American empire i.e. the last Western empire, the constraint of this framing was imposed. The term “American Shot” alone is the summary of the message Milena wishes to convey.
In reality, she indulged in larger frames, called “Italian shots”, as if the memory of Rome still hovers over the United States, but this is of course the view of a European.“
PORTRAITS
“Even before the emergence of civilizations, human beings devoted part of their lives to representing faces. Animals, gods, chiefs, parents. They drew on rocks, they carved masks and statues in pieces of wood, clay or stones. The art of portraiture is found in every work of art. Each era carries its style and its faces. It is accepted today that the portrait is the representation of the absent. Absent God. Absent Master. Absent wife. Father absent. Unknown soldier. Lost friend. Jesus on the cross. Regretted Mary.
For centuries, talented artists have painted the other with a delicacy, a sensitivity that exalts the love or admiration of one’s neighbor, of the one we miss. Today, more than one hundred million selfies are posted every day on social networks, cries of pain from the one who has uprooted themselves, crying out their absence through a smiling face. Our portraits have become screams and blindness.“
Milena Carbone´s Bio
Milena Carbone is a French artist born in 1992 in Strasbourg. She has written and photographed since the age of 16. In 2010, she entered university where she studied psychology.
In 2012, her life changed. She met the love of her life which only lasted forty days. She reads the IPCC reports and realizes the risk of the collapse of civilization, sacrificed on the altar of ignorance and greed.
In 2013, she cut short her studies, and did an accelerated course in computer graphics. She worked for two years in an advertising agency, and in 2015 started out as a freelance graphic designer.
Between 2017 and 2019, artist friends encouraged her to publish her texts and to exhibit her photographs. She participated in two exhibitions of artists’ collectives where she presented photographs associated with short stories.
In mid 2019, she signed up for Second Life. She discovered its artistic potential and since then has devoted all her free time to creation, associating, as in real life, images and texts.
Milena Carbone is a fiction in which, as in any artistic work, biographical and imaginary elements are mixed.
Artistic Project in Second Life
Milena Carbone’s artistic project on Second Life is the continuation of her work in RL. Its specificity is based on anonymity, an important component of this virtual world.
By accepting the rule of the “double” (the real “I” and the virtual “I”), Milena Carbone includes herself in her artwork : she is fiction and questions her place in the world and the scope of her word.
By asking: “Who speaks in Second Life?”, Milena Carbone, author and fiction, returns this question to us in our real life: Who speaks ? How and why is it that an “I” appears capable of observing, from the inside, the universe that created it ? How can we ignore our ignorance to the point of destroying ourselves ?
How does our language, limited and discontinuous, lose us in sufficiency?
Her creative process is iterative: some of her images inspire her stories and these stories modify the development of the image, which itself transforms the story.
The phase of editing is very important. It combines the raw image of Second Life with a black and white layer and textures. These different photoshop layers represent, for Milena Carbone, “layers of meaning”.
The Recurring themes in Milena Carbone’s work
Her main themes are:
- The collapse of humanism, and even humanity;
- Fiction, reality and consciousness
- Poetry of science and spirituality;
- The advanced civilization of trees;
- The assumption that God could have been an alcoholic.
To feed her artistic project, she draws inspiration from science, psychology, philosophy and religions.
Her favorite subjects are female avatars and / or natural or urban landscapes. She rarely takes herself as the subject of her images preferring to discover model avatars with attitude.
Where to find Milena Carbone’s Artwork
Milena Carbone has her own art galleries :
The Carbone Gallery, which shows her exhibitions and guest artists.
The Carbone Gallery @ Noir´Wen City
Milena Carbone’s writing can be read on Medium
Welcome and enjoy the beauty of art!
Nitroglobus Roof Gallery Facebook
