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.