Marat Guelman and the group + - Komma: 251 West 19th Street, New York

NEW YORK, NY – Ethan Cohen Gallery is pleased to announce First of all, it’s beautiful, a new project by artist, curator, cultural strategist, Marat Guelman, developed in collaboration with the international art group + - Komma (Ruslan Solopeev, Boban Marković Jr., and Jean Jules). The exhibition considers AI not simply as a tool but as a co-author, a partner in articulating the aesthetics of an anxious age and offering a renewed perspective on identity.

The project was inspired by the observation that the theme of nuclear threat is used as a tool of political pressure. First of all, it’s beautiful reframes collective dread, specifically the nuclear threat, without resorting to direct political rhetoric. Instead, Guelman proposes a lucid acceptance of finitude, much as one accepts personal mortality. From this stance, clarity and freedom emerge. First of all, it's beautiful is not about destruction, but rather a new form of inner stability. It explores how culture can transform fear into conscious experience and threat into the language of art.

A radical gesture anchors the exhibition: placing the image of a nuclear explosion in a familiar visual context: as an element of interior design or part of an aesthetic experience. Similarly, the idea of the end of civilization should become part of our worldview. The project is based on the paradoxical decision to strip the symbol of destruction of its exclusivity and give it a form that evokes contemplation rather than fear. The visual language of the works deliberately draws on a style recognizable to a wide audience, repeating the history of art, from ancient manuscripts to Impressionism, Pop Art and Arte Povera, thus breaking down the barrier between beauty and destruction. Here, Marat Guelman and the group ±Komma in collaboration with AI generate new artistic codes and unexpected visual solutions.

Marat Guelman (b. 1960, Former Soviet Union) has been a defining force in post-Soviet contemporary art. In 1990 he founded one of Moscow’s first private contemporary art galleries, a key platform for the new wave and a laboratory for experimentation. From 2008 to 2013 he directed PERMM Museum of Contemporary Art in Perm, initiating large-scale cultural programs that advanced regional identity through art. After emigrating, he founded Guelman & Unbekannt in Berlin, among the first European institutions dedicated to art created with AI. As a member of the Russian Antiwar Committee, Guelman has recently been designated a “terrorist” and “extremist” by the Russian government, a classification understood within the context of contemporary political repression.

Today, Guelman’s practice bridges curating and artmaking, using AI to probe modernity’s fears and the aesthetics of a new era. The project First of all, it's beautiful marks a new chapter in Marat Guelman's creative journey. This is not a change of profession, but a change of perspective: for Guelman, art is no longer an object of demonstration and institutional promotion, but a means of personal expression and philosophical analysis of the present moment.

+ - Komma formed in Montenegro in 2023 and includes Ruslan Solopeev, Boban Marković Jr., and Jean Jules. The group works in the field of visual art, experimenting with various media, including graphics, video and installations.

First of all, it’s beautiful is not a project about the end of the world; it is a project about how to continue living. By absorbing a symbol of catastrophe into culture’s everyday image bank, the artists invite contemplation over panic, proposing beauty as a method for staying present, alert, and free.

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