Exhibition "Alexandra Vertinskaya. Edencraft. Retrospection"

In the Heritage gallery, an exhibition by Alexandra Vertinsky opens, in which the most important topics for the artist are combined: flowers, classical ruins, sky, first shown in the context of poetry. All of them were seen by the artist through the complex optics of centuries-old culture, contemporary art, philosophical issues and are closely intertwined in her special drama. Huge inflorescences of roses and wisteria (from the Classic Roses series, 2014–2016), majestic mountains of clouds (Variable Clouds series, 2012), emphasized artificial fragments of the Roman Forum (Manu Intrepida series, 2009) and the careless aging of the Venetian palazzo shown in Vertinskaya’s compositions outside of any context, enlarged, as if as close as possible to the viewer, but not equal to themselves. To a much greater extent, the artist is not talking about specific plants and buildings, but about the ambivalence of life, beauty, art. About the frightening and alluring feeling of the interpenetration of time and eternity. The most beautiful flower carries the beginning of corruption, and even the Roman Empire, the foundation of European civilization, lies in the dust of royal debris.

However, the author does not propose to irrevocably plunge into decadent admiring the beauty of fading. The poetics of painting by Alexandra Vertinsky escapes the narrowness of final judgments, combining the indistinguishable magic of decay and the eternal rebirth from the ashes, the cyclical nature of the story, the hope of a new life, always ready to blossom. In her elaborate universe, opposites converge, not finding permission for their opposition. The architectural rose is no less than a marble capital. The endless blue of the sky, seen through the naked branches, equally predicts the birth of a new cycle of life, and its winter sunset.

At the exhibition in the Heritage Gallery, the balance of life and death, of course, tends to favor spring and eternal flowering. At the center of the exposition is an installation created specifically for the project and completely composed of flowering and green house plants. And also a new series of works “EDENCRAFT” by Vertinsky with images of plants, based on photographs, picturesquely processed in a complex author’s technique. Both projects were carried out in partnership with the Main Botanical Garden. N.V. Qitsin. The undoubted relationship between the metaphysics of the works of Alexandra Vertinsky and the poetic word was expressed in the inclusion of poetic statements by modern and classical authors in the very fabric of the exposition, giving it an additional dimension.

Exhibition Partner:

The main botanical garden to them. N.V. Tsitsina of the Russian Academy of Sciences.