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Fortune Teller is a nomadic kunstverein founded in 2022. Inspired by itinerant fortune tellers

present in many cultures, the project aims to illuminate artistic practices which ask vigorous,

uncompromising, urgent questions about possible things to come. We strive to build an engaging

international community of supporters around cutting-edge art.

"Precarious Elements Terraforming", our second project, opens on July 15, 2023, in Athens at

P.E.T. Projects. In our established tradition, each opening features a discursive lecture

performance, immersing the visitors in the context of the exhibition and is followed by a friends-

and-family invitation-only dinner party.

Projects

2023

A solo exhibition of

Liva Dudareva

hosted by P.E.T. Projects, Athens

Precarious Elements Terraforming:

Hollow Earth,

Stifled Fire,

Thin Air,

Thick Water.

opening –

July 15, 18.00-21.30

exhibition view –

July 16-22

, by appointment

Kerkyras 87, Athens

Extractive processes broadly define our current relationship with the material world following

the domination of the capitalist accumulative mentality. What will become the basis of material

reality in the future? Different entanglements of non-humans and their environment after the

Anthropocene are inevitable in the presence of manufactured minerals.

We have never been modern, as Latour observed. The philosophy of the human condition tends

to go in circles. What if our futures have happened, were predicted and waned in the distant

past?

Liva Dudareva questions the relationship between humanity and the environment in the context

of the long-standing dichotomy of natural and artificial. Her practice and works imagine the

materials that could be commonplace in ‘nature’ centuries from now, when plastic, radioactive

waste, liquid crystals and sequestrated carbon of contemporary anthropocentric existence will

eventually merge with the landscape in unison. What is the cultural and social significance of

imagining this inevitable mutation of techno-wastes and beyond-human ecologies? Is there a

place for sublime or “beauty” as a category?

Inspired by arguably less anthropocentric archaic philosophies of searching for the fundamental

element of being, which defines the essence of life, the exhibition consists of four chapters:

Plastic, Plutonium, Liquid Crystals and Carbon. The different exhibition chapters are a unique

survey of Liva’s various ongoing artistic research projects. The selection of works – sculptures,

installations, ceramics and prints – form a dialogical space where the possible futures of

planetary ecology is envisioned without ideological filtering of desire, which is in itself distorting

the picture of plausible reality.

The artist suggests we all think about the material basis of our existence: what comes after

realistically unattainable purity of “ecology”, and how can we conceptually process the apparent

hybridity of human terraformed nature and the philosophical search for the fundamental basis of

the planet?

The opening of the exhibition on July 15 will feature a collaborative lecture performance, A

Conference, a Ritual, an Invocation, by Liva Dudareva and Denis Maksimov-Gupta, starting at 20.00,

which will activate the exhibition space and the discourse of the exhibition in a tradition of the

Fortune Teller openings.

2022

A solo exhibition of

David Bernstein

hosted by Keiv and The Breeder, Athens

To Half Sell a Duck

Opening: September 10, 16.00 – 21.00 (feat. three performances)

Duration: September 11 - October 1, 2022

Location 1 (performances & main show) @ Keiv, Kalimnou 38, www.keiv.space

Location 2 (additional works) @ The Breeder, Iasonos 45, www.thebreedersystem.com

David Bernstein (he/him, 1988, San Antonio, Texas) is an artist based in Brussels and

Amsterdam. He is a linguistic, metaphysic, mystical lunatic, and likes to play with words. His solo

project brings a constellation of works around the theme of religious futures. Bernstein comes

from a Reconstructionist Jewish background and is influenced by "The Crash", a concept from

progressive Rabbi, Bennay Lappe. She argues that religious "master narratives" will eventually

crash, and we should choose a path of radical re-imagination.

This is embodied in the artist's exploration of "Judeo-Futurism", reclaiming historical symbols of

oppression by placing them into queer fantasies. Guests were guided through the exhibition with

a performance that tells a story about a radical priest who makes kinky paintings, the creation of

a Golem who fights canards, and an encounter with the artist Danh Võ who asks Bernstein to

cut up sixteen-century wooden Jesus into pieces.

The exhibition featured drawings, paintings, and a sculpture, providing a setting for the

performance. The show was presented in two locations: most of the works being presented in

Keiv and several works featured in The Breeder.

Images:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/edo9o7iwh50sr1gn9pc5e/h?dl=0&rlkey=veq48cst6x6kf0zfd

u0da0tql (installation views)

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/80urxh1fm3pzs9t/AADgg6jjKQLt6UsEaCBSRcdKa?dl=0

(performance & dinner)

Artists

David Bernstein, www.yesyesdavid.com

Liva Dudareva, www.livadudareva.lv

Press

Fortune Teller hopes to act as a social hub for likeminded collectors to connect to one another –

Arts Newspaper International

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/09/23/invite-only-commercial-gallery-debuts-in-

athens

Hosts

Keiv, www.keiv.space

The Breeder, www.thebreedersystem.com

P.E.T. Projects, www.petprojects.studio

Founders

Denis Maksimov-Gupta, www.denismaksimov.com

Inga Bergen, www.ingabergen.de

For more information about our work, ideas of collaboration or any other feedback, please write

us at hellofortuneteller@gmail.com.