The circle of time and a crack in the sky

On August 12, 2022, the Pavel Kuznetsov House Museum opened an exhibition of Stanislav Azarov, Tamara Shipitsina, Yulia Kartoshkina and Masha Ivanova, participants in the Circle of Time and a Crack in the Sky art project organized by the Seven Winds Foundation in May this year.

An exhibition of works by Stanislav Azarov, Tamara Shipitsina, Yulia Kartoshkina and Masha Ivanova, participants of the art project "The Circle of Times and a Crack in the Sky" has opened in the house-museum of Pavel Kuznetsov (a branch of the A. N. Radishchev State Art Museum named after A. N. Radishchev).

The expedition part of the project (a creative trip to the homeland of Velimir and Vera Khlebnikov and plein-air practice in the south of the Volgograd region and in the Republic of Kalmykia) was carried out by the Seven Winds Foundation in May 2022. From this exhibition in the unusual space of the wooden attic of the House of Pavel Varfolomeevich Kuznetsov, organized by the Seven Winds Foundation together with the staff of the State Art Museum named after. A. N. Radishchev - Olga Belskaya, Natalia Tarakanova and Olga Kostryukova, its exposition part begins.

On the one hand, this trip was a continuation of the long-term practice of organizing plein-air sessions in the Lower Volga region, held by the Seven Winds Foundation for more than ten years, on the other hand, a completely new and, in many respects, experimental undertaking, in which the artists were deprived of the usual context of linear perspectives and objects. Instead, they were immersed in the paradoxical duality of emptiness and fullness of the boundless steppe space, as well as clouds, meanings, hills, wind and roads, from which Khlebnikov’s worlds arose in due time.

During the journey, the route of which followed visible and invisible time circles, watching “how the arrow of the century moves”, the artists traveled hundreds of kilometers, painted, photographed, communicated, met with amazing places and unusual people. One of the circles of time, in the system of calculation familiar to us, was literally closed - exactly a hundred years ago Khlebnikov was in these places for the last time, a hundred years ago a poem was written that gave a semantic dotted line to the whole project the poem “If I turn humanity into a clock”, a hundred years ago Khlebnikov died, shortly after that (also exactly a hundred years ago) the text of the super-story "Zangezi" was published and the publication of "Plates of Fate" was announced.

The exhibition presents graphics, printed graphics, paintings and photographs. The composition of the exposition space, in many respects, follows the principles of constructing Khlebnikov’s synthetic super-story "Zangezi" and consists of independent parts - "planes", "multi-colored stones" and "equal-sized words" of each of the participants in the art project. One of the elements of the exposition (and art project as such) were colored flags - lung-ta, collected with the help of a non-random recomposition of the texts of the first edition of "Zangezi" in 1922, and the semantic epicenter of the exhibition (and expedition) was the monument to Velimir Khlebnikov, created by the Kalmyk graphic artist and muralist Stepan Kimovich Botiev and installed in the open steppe near the village of Small Derbety - the place where the chairman of the globe Velimir and his sister, the artist Vera, were born.

We are very pleased that our (rather experimental) project aroused such genuine interest among the remarkable Saratov public, in how many people came to the opening day, and especially in the lively communication between the organizers of the exhibition and its visitors, which dragged on until the closing of the museum. Art curators of the project Victoria Kharitonova and Nikolai Malygin told the audience about the interweaving of meanings and events that led them to organize such an unusual plein air trip, about how it all happened, what further development this project is planned for, answered questions and promised the public to organize a few more special events before the finissage of the exhibition in Saratov.

The exhibition is held within the framework of the project “Museum-Laboratory. House Museum of Pavel Kuznetsov as a field for artistic experiment” and will last until September 18.