Dreams are Made of This

ZÉRUÌ is proud to present 'Dreams Are Made of This', a duo exhibition featuring Bulgarian artist Vikenti
Komitski and American artist Aaron Roth.

This exhibition highlights the ecological and social issues related to extraction, recycling, and disposal, as an
attempt to deconstruct the digital-image world. Featuring paintings, objects, and installations by the two
artists. The different bodies of works delve into the fantasies and desires that are transmitted through the
virtual world, as mediated by technology, and the economic cycles and power dynamics that surround it.
The show serves as a reminder that our reality is seen through technology, but it is also these very
technologies that distract us from perceiving certain aspects of reality. By deconstructing the mechanisms of
this bias, we can move beyond the dualistic understanding of the natural and technological.

Komitski's works in this exhibition involve appropriate found objects, such as a surgery table, and
mechanical element matrices, combining them with raw materials used in electronic device production such
as pyrite and other unnamed metals and minerals. The resulting pieces resemble remains of something
half-organic and half-alien technology. This highlights how the digital world needs a physical structure, one
made from metals and minerals mined from the earth, that are interlinked with the physical world.

The work of Aaron Roth uses found images and objects related to Bulgarian Pop folk (Chalga) and
contemporary history, interrogating their relationship to the accumulation of capital expressed through the
luxury goods connected to the extraction of resources and political power. The imperceptibility of fake
luxury is the thin skin which underneath lies the detritus implicated within these digital images, as they are
in one way or another the aftermath. The images of a digital sludge that come after and also as a result of the
extractive practices: A painting of Kadyrov's Prada monolith Combat boots, sending soldiers to die and the
only way we know is because someone decided to zoom in. Air conditioning from a land cruiser is the choice
car of mining executives; the leather upholstery is reminiscent of casinos, where the advancements in
technology are an instrument to extract wealth.

This new body of work communicates the potential falsehood of progress that one experiences. Casinos, as a
contextual motif in Aaron Roth's practice, promises luxury and comfort using the newest technologies. In
contrast to this, Vikenti Komitski uses the image of electronic recycling computers from a long gone EU 

project destined to be destroyed to extract their precious metals. These objects, in their attempt to convey an
air of sophistication but reveal themselves to be obsolete, but still real.