"Heavenly Paradise on Earth"

The East Meets West Gallery exhibition project "Heavenly Paradise on Earth" opens from March 6 to April 5, 2021 at the All-Russian Museum of Decorative Arts.

Flowers, bouquets, floral motifs, floral ornaments initially, even before the human image, were present in world art - in all its national segments and style directions from Western Europe to China and Japan, Iran and India.

In the work of artists, flowers are invaluable, they are a direct and everyday presence, they are realized and embodied either as the main object of art, or as an auxiliary detail of the whole, or as an accompanying melody of the main theme. Not to mention the specific symbolic load of the flower image, direct and immediate emotional communication with the viewer.

Tatiana Paleeva’s new exhibition project "Heavenly Paradise on Earth", articulating the theme of flowers in such a metaphorical way, invites viewers not so much to unravel and tasting symbolic codes, but - and this is the main message - to observe and contemplate the diverse plastic transformations of the chosen theme, a wide palette of stylistic manners and individual handwriting. The project is based on the works of leading artists of the XXI century - easel and decorative arts masters, who own different materials and techniques, as well as a small corner of the archaic flowers.

The idea of transforming the symbolism of flowers in classical and modern art, which are considered from two points of view - European tradition and oriental art - have not yet found their serious understanding and presentation. The refraction of classical European and Eastern traditions in contemporary art has brought to the present project a huge variety of techniques, materials and approaches to their interpenetration in the depiction of flowers.

The exposition presents items of decorative and applied art made of glass, metal, mosaics made of natural stone, modern textile panels in the author’s design with embroidery, sewing, printing and painting on fabric, with the technique of assemblage, patchwork, with embroidery, appliques, as well as plastic abstract shapes - made of porcelain, clay, reminiscent of flowers and complex natural formations. Works of easel painting and graphics associated with the depiction of flowers by various contemporary artists acquire either a historically European or frankly oriental sound, reflecting a diverse palette of stylistic and technical capabilities of the 21st century. The project involves artists Suren Ayvazyan, Alina Batalina, Anna Birshtein, Andrey Mamontov, Natalia Muradova, Olga Osnach, Viktor Reshetnikov, Irina Starzhenetskaya, Nikolai Tabachkov, Natalia Khlebtsevich,Tatiana Yan.

The section of decorative and applied arts was truly decorated with exhibits from three departments of the All-Russian Museum of Decorative and Applied and Folk Art: the Department of Textiles, the Department of Glass and the Department of Printed Sources and Fine Materials. Some of the items in the exhibition on the art of China and Japan were provided by the curator Tatyana Paleeva.

Easel painting at the exhibition brings together wonderful and different artists, but equal in their creative achievements and rich individual "stories". A master of an exceptionally fruitful and long-lasting theme of flowers, Irina Starzhenetskaya often works with pictorial suites (diptychs, triptychs, polyptyches), creating a prototype of a flower, plastically subtly and carefully moving away from its specificity (lily, magnolia, tulip), to a poetic generalization. In the philosophical lyrics of Khayyam, in his "flower" motives, Starzhenetskaya unmistakably felt and embodied the universal symbolism (not European and not Eastern) of life and death, prosperity and decline, light and darkness.

Anna Birshtein is an artist from the same refined, hereditary cultural environment. Her theme of the "Garden of Eden" leads directly to the familiar and earthly wonderful "summer cottage" ("Summer", "August", etc.). The artist is carried away by the expanded enchanting element of flowering, the festive seasonal "solstice", some kind of cosmic heliotropism. She works on an easel, like on a loom, so her paintings are emphatically tapestry.

Painting as meaningful construction and compositionally verified montage is demonstrated in her paintings by Tatiana Yan . Her vision of Lily with biblical symbolism is friendly and dialogical with Chinese motifs in the paintings Longevity and Inner Courtyard of the Dai Temple.

Olga Osnach for the first time presented new works from the series: "Tulipomania", "The Goal". In these works one can see the physiology, psychology and artistic semiotics of a single flower image with its cult in Persia, with a single eastern symbolism of ideal, sacrificial love, with numerous European connotations and transformations.

Suren Ayvazyan cultivated his separate and clearly structured garden in a lush and full-blooded painting. A real passion awakens in the author when he turns to the cherished theme of "Scarlet Poppies", continuing the tradition of Saryan (these are the Armenian poppies) and picturesquely playing the universal oriental symbol, giving him a strong sensual accent. Poppy as a mythopoetic image, transcendental for East and West, on the one hand, a sign of oblivion and sleep, on the other, a symbol of unfading youth and feminine charm.

By the abundance of compatibility of materials and by the globality of artistic thinking in the camp of decorative and applied arts, perhaps the number one artist is Natalya Muradova . She combines in her works different epochs and cultures of human civilization, for example, antiquity and the Renaissance, European baroque and the graphic universe of the East "ukiyo-e", Russian classics and modern avant-garde, the art of monumental textile panels and the inner spiritual energy of easel painting.

Natalia Khlebtsevich is presented with delicate, airy, petal-light porcelain. Her objects, united by two themes - "White Wind" and "Winter Blossom", implying generalized plant images, achieve the perfection of form and absolute plastics due to the strong combination of rare ingenuity of design and delicate filigree performance.

Viktor Reshetnikov continues his line in decorative ceramics of “conceptual gardens” with abstract compositions in the coordinates of his characteristic minimalism. The artistic image is sometimes built on an intense color, sometimes on a geometric structure, or on a logical spatial rhythm, a clear harmony of object modules of small sizes and simple shapes.

For the first time, a Roman mosaic appears on the curator’s site. Alina Batalina presents the panel "Hyacinths" specially created for this exhibition.

Works made of metal by Nikolai Tabachkov switch us from abstract imagery to solid and solid materiality. The organization of his works is connected directly with handicraft, with a kind of blacksmith’s ritual, labor-intensive forging of metal, with monochrome and textured color-plasticity of forged screens, decorative acanthus, metal gratings, stylized ornaments and plant forms.

“Heavenly Paradise on Earth” does not pretend to be absolute novelty, but from its position it articulates the ever-actual dream of a heavenly paradise, embodied in the “Garden of Earthly Joys”. It is so important that the integrity and harmony of the universal “garden” are not disturbed and hurt by Baudelaire’s “flowers of evil”. The defense against this Evil has always been true Art.

Curator Tatiana Paleeva