Galina Shevchenko, Bianca’s Wonderland. Musings in Mixed Realities. 2 channel video. Part 1. Bianca’s Wonderland 2024-2025, Digital Video (Still), 2024-2025
Bianca’s Wonderland is an immersion into expanded grotesque frescoes of Palazzo Bianca Capello in Florence. It is also a homage to manifestation of love between Bianca Capello and Francesco I de Medici, through hermeticism & secret alchemy. Aesthetics of Grotesque is based on the Renaissance’s visualization and recontextualization of the “pagan dream.” “Grotesque” is a sacred place of intersection between visual culture and the subconscious, embodiment of creation and manifestation of aesthetic lineage between the Renaissance and the Antiquity. Visual explorations of the Renaissance Grotesques could be regarded as conceptual precursors to Freudian excavations in psychoanalysis. Renaissance Florence, the new Athens, the home of Neoplatonic Academy of Cosimo I, the cradle of culture and modernity became the stage of the legendary life-long love affair between the Florentine prince Francesco I de Medici and the Venetian beauty Bianca Capello, an intellectual, an alchemist and a truly emancipated woman of the Renaissance.
Palazzo di Bianca Capello on via Maggio was commissioned for Bianca Capello and largely funded by Francesco. Façade of the palazzo is decorated by Bernadino Poccetti, master of the Renaissance Grotesque allegory. Galina Shevchenko is recontextualizing the Grotesques of the Palazzo di Bianca Capello façade through mediation and animation. Her monsters are inspired by the façade’s vignettes and are animated into infinite digital dances. Galina is indulging into the aesthetics of the Renaissance Grotesques, its wonder and vitality. She is exploring the concept of the Grotesque as an embodiment of creation and procreation along with the feminist corporeal sensibility, emulating the biological: morphology, deformity, through wonders of technology and mediation.
The first channel of the video/Bianca’s wonderland is the expanded grotesque wonderland itself.
Galina Shevchenko, Bianca’s Wonderland. Musings in Mixed Realities. 2 channel video. Part 2. Bianca’s Mixed realities, Digital Video (Still), 2024-2025
Bianca’s Wonderland is an immersion into expanded grotesque frescoes of Palazzo Bianca Capello in Florence. It is also a homage to manifestation of love between Bianca Capello and Francesco I de Medici, through hermeticism & secret alchemy. Aesthetics of Grotesque is based on the Renaissance’s visualization and recontextualization of the “pagan dream.” “Grotesque” is a sacred place of intersection between visual culture and the subconscious, embodiment of creation and manifestation of aesthetic lineage between the Renaissance and the Antiquity. Visual explorations of the Renaissance Grotesques could be regarded as conceptual precursors to Freudian excavations in psychoanalysis. Renaissance Florence, the new Athens, the home of Neoplatonic Academy of Cosimo I, the cradle of culture and modernity became the stage of the legendary life-long love affair between the Florentine prince Francesco I de Medici and the Venetian beauty Bianca Capello, an intellectual, an alchemist and a truly emancipated woman of the Renaissance.
Palazzo di Bianca Capello on via Maggio was commissioned for Bianca Capello and largely funded by Francesco. Façade of the palazzo is decorated by Bernadino Poccetti, master of the Renaissance Grotesque allegory. Galina Shevchenko is recontextualizing the Grotesques of the Palazzo di Bianca Capello façade through mediation and animation. Her monsters are inspired by the façade’s vignettes and are animated into infinite digital dances. Galina is indulging into the aesthetics of the Renaissance Grotesques, its wonder and vitality. She is exploring the concept of the Grotesque as an embodiment of creation and procreation along with the feminist corporeal sensibility, emulating the biological: morphology, deformity, through wonders of technology and mediation.
In the 2nd channel of the video, Bianca wanders through Venice and Florence in the form of augmented reality spirit until she walks into Antichita di Alina Malova where she finds her projected metaverse.
Artist Bio:
Galina Shevchenko is a multimedia artist, exploring post-feminist identities through mediation, digital materiality and augmented reality. Her recent shows include: CADAF Paris; Aqua Fair Miami; Berlin’s Director’s lounge; Hamilton MAS (Felixstowe, UK); International Museum of Surgical Science (Chicago); Shiva Gallery (New York City); Lubeznik Center for the Art, Michigan City, IN; Venezia Conteporanea Association, Venice, Italy; Antichità di Alina Malova Florence, Italy.
Galina is Associate Professor of Art and a program coordinator of Digital Multimedia and Design Program at Harold Washington College
http://www.galinashevchenkosequences.com/