Aftermath

Galerie Mazzoli Berlin is pleased to present AFTERMATH, a group show featuring artists Gillian Brett, Lucia Cristiani, Amandine Guruceaga, Thilo Jenssen, Teresa Murta, Ugo Schiavi, curated by Lucia Longhi.
The show reflects the gallery’s purpose of scouting new international voices echoing current global issues through multidisciplinary artistic codes. The project has surfaced as an exploration of the concept of aftermath, eventually manifesting as a polyphonic exercise in taking the pulse of current artistic positions dealing with our troubled times. These artistic approaches do not address the topic of aftermath, but rather operate within it.
The word aftermath delves into notions of consequence and outcome, etymologically anchored in natural roots as it refers to the mowing of fields. The show borrows its title from a poem by H.W. Longfellow (1873) where the author explores emotional states in the aftermath of a tragedy. While suggesting that what we destroy may never grow back as it once was, it also hints at the possibility of a new beginning.

The exhibition is also inspired by a sentence by art critic JJ Charlesworth: “Art is often not made until the aftermath, by those who survived or were far away. It’s this distance – of both time and place – that produces the tensions at the heart of art’s response to human catastrophes”. This statement emphasizes a clear separation between a crisis and its consequences.

Given the current global situation, in which the repercussions of urgent realities of pandemics, climate crisis, wars, energy shortages and mass migration seem to be prolonged, is it still possible to operate a distinction between a “before” and an “after”? We rather came to terms with a new dimension, a never ending limbo whose duration we don’t know, and therefore, a constant state of evolution and adjustment. We humans are adapting our bodies, our collective thinking and evolutionary horizons to new modes and codes of existence.

In most of today's art we find the urge of researching some "otherness", a longing for a different - inner and outer, real or otherworldly - environment to inhabit. The exhibited works convey an idea of aftermath as an agency that marshals acceptance, endurance, redemption, readiness - a force that questions past and future and shapes new worlds. The show thus prompts a sense of both awareness and disorientation, paranoia and desire. It discloses a dilated momentum towards alternative realities and perpetual survival strategies, in which we partially let go of our grip and merge with technology, nature, memories, fears and with other living and non-living forms. Through different formal and conceptual lenses, the artists advocate a conscious experience of the ongoing collision, in which we re-fabricate our matter into a new identity, mutating our skins and our faiths.

The crash merges with the aftermath, which turns into an autonomous and fertile space of self-consciousness and imagination; a perpetual training for the present; a system of struggle and rebirth; a set of safety mechanisms; a laboratory to reforge our very flesh.
Aftermath is a prism through which we are invited to read our contemporaneity.



Gillian Brett (Paris, France, 1990) lives and works in Marseille. Her practice analyzes the relationship between human beings and technology, reflecting how this equation shapes our surrounding world. Her works, made of electronic waste, address the current digital disaster and its concrete connection to reality, despite its apparent immaterial nature. She holds a Master’s degree in Fine Arts at Villa Arson (Nice) and a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College, University of London. She has exhibited internationally at: Munch Museum, Oslo; Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken, Germany; Das Weisse Haus, Vienna; Artissima Fair, Torino and many others institutions. International recognitions include: Prix Dauphine pour l’Art Contemporain and Xiaomi HyperCharge Award.

Lucia Cristiani (Milan, Italy, 1991) lives and works between Milan and Sarajevo. Her research explores the perception of individual and collective self through the memory of objects, places, and their relationship with people. Through her practice, she seeks narrative as an instinctive human condition for the construction of identity. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group shows in private galleries and institutions, including: Fondazione La Quadriennale (Roma), Fondazione ICA (Milan), Manifattura Tabacchi (Florence), MART (Rovereto), Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Turin), Fondazione Elpis (Milan), and GAM, Galleria d'Arte Moderna (Verona).

Amandine Guruceaga (Toulouse, France, 1989) lives and works in Marseille. Her work tests limits of matter - metal, fabric, skin - and plays with the boundaries between art and craft, organic and technical, reflecting the fragility of our world. She graduated from École Supérieure d’Art et de Design Marseille Méditerranée. Notable exhibitions include: "Colour Sparks", Monteverita Gallery, Paris (2018), final show of LVMH Métiers d’Art residency; Art-0-Rama Fair (2019); Julie Caredda Gallery, Paris (2023) and many public commissions including a sculpture for Park of La Villette, Paris. International recognitions: MAIF Sculpture Award, 64th Salon Montrouge, Révélations Emerige Prize, Traversée program by French Ministry of Culture (winner, 2021).

Thilo Jenssen (Daun, Germany, 1984) lives and works in Vienna. His practice deals with visual codes of the present and moments of control we encounter in public space. He is interested in making structures and steering strategies visible, to investigate the tension between hold and control, restriction and support, dominance and auxiliary measures. He studied sculpture under Florian Slotawa and performative sculpture under Christian Philipp Müller at Kunsthochschule Kassel, and painting under Daniel Richter at Akademie der Bildenden Künste Vienna. Recent exhibitions: “Critique of Not-so-pure Reason”, Simulacra gallery, Beijing, 2023; “Immaculate“, Mars Frankfurt, 2022; “Uppers and Downers“, Christine König Galerie, 2022; “Feelings. Kunst und Emotion“, Pinakothek der Moderne, München, 2019.

Teresa Murta (Lisbon, Portugal, 1993) is based in Berlin. She studied Fine Arts at the Upper School of Arts and Design in Caldas da Rainha, Portugal. In her paintings she explores the concepts of wonder, absurdity and metamorphosis. The way she intuitively plays and combines artificial and natural realms welcomes the viewer to other realities. She has been exhibiting regularly since 2019 in Portugal and abroad. In 2022 Teresa was part of several group shows such as “(0/1) O Zero e o Um” at Natural History and Science Museum in Lisbon, and “Que te seja leve o peso das estrelas” at Centro de Arte Contemporanea in Coimbra. Her latest solo show was “Fishnet” at Instituto Camoes in Berlin in 2022.

Ugo Schiavi (Paris, 1987) lives and works in Marseille, France. He studied at Villa Arson (Nice). At the core of his research is an archaeology of the future, in which ancient remains, human waste and nature merge. His work is placed at the intersection of history and fiction, questioning the evolutional horizons of a digitized humanity. Commissions in public spaces include: Uprising (2018), a monumental sculpture at the City Hall in Paris, The shipwreck of Neptune (2021), a large-scale intervention in Nantes; Uprising-Collapse (2022) at Tuileries Garden organized by Paris Plus par Art Basel & Louvre Museum. Solo exhibitions include: Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Orléans, Musée Réattu in Arles, CAB Grenoble. In 2022 he participated in the Lyon Biennale. He has been selected by the Olympic Games 2024 for the production of a permanent installation in Paris.