Exhibition Anastasia Kuznetsova-Ruf "From Holiday to Holiday"

Here is a great holiday holiday
I’m sitting at the window
I look into the sky higher
And I see a salute there festive…
(D.A. Prigov)

“Salute” is the central work of this project, which reflects two opposites in a series of days, months, years of human life. These are holidays and weekdays. In this work, Anastasia applied her most skillful compositional technique, creating a sense of the vastness of the space that fills most of the canvas. The picture is deserted, only at its bottom in the black of night on the front line, a window sill with binoculars and a stub of apple on a plate can be seen close-up. In the distance, flashes of salute are visible on the horizon, there is a celebration, through the haze of range the city, finely depicted below, burns with lights. Anastasia sparingly uses color, but the tonal gradation of grayish-bluish allows her to give a lot of nuances and meanings to the plot. Alas, the holiday is far from the everyday life of the owners of the windowsill.

“If you imagine the structure of everyday life of an ordinary person,” says Anastasia Kuznetsova-Ruf, “they are, as a rule, looped in the scheme“ from holiday to holiday ”. That is, from one interesting and bright event - through a series of gray and similar days, to the next, "well-deserved" holiday, fun. " It should be noted that Kuznetsova-Ruf is busy not only with solving purely plastic problems, she also speaks to her viewer in part and as a mentor. So, in the project “Do not miss” (2013), Anastasia shows how, by building grandiose plans and castles in the air, a person can miss life itself, and in the exhibition “Growth Point” (2015), she proves the need for a constant evolution of personality. It seems that now the artist is talking about a contemporary who is most afraid of wallowing in everyday life, everyday work, the boredom and hopelessness of which DA Prigov so symbolically described: “Just wash the dishes / Look, there’s a new one / What kind of freedom is there / Here before to live old age. " Everyday life of Kuznetsova-Ruf (Head-I, Head-II, Head-III, Incoming call, Headless horseman, Steering wheel, Octopus, Apples) is brighter than her holidays (Salute, Old New Year, Tsar-fish, Over the edge, Spyglass, To Jamon, Peephole). Girls - heroines of everyday paintings are naked, their bodies are full of energy, life and beauty. The bodies of the girls are voluminous, their mean color in the subtle nuances of shades of brown opposes the whiteness of the surrounding space. From under the hands of the girls (Pressure-I, II, III), under pressure bursts paint, scattering with raspberry, yellow, green bright splashes, creating a feeling of salute, celebration.

“In childhood, a holiday is a happy day, someone invented and organized, and fun can simply consist of trifles” (A. Kuznetsova-Ruf). An adorable girl is looking through a telescope or the whole has disappeared behind a plate with some yummy. In the works of Anastasia, children’s characters are especially touching. “For an adult, a holiday is an incentive to live and move on. For some this is a happy event in the future, for others it can be vital joys - delicious food, love, communication with a child, etc.) ”(A. Kuznetsova-Ruf). The "holidays" of A. Kuznetsova-Ruf are either black and white, or in their images she contrasts various shades of light or white with dark or black, brownish, gray. "Weekdays" in the works of A. Kuznetsova-Ruf are filled with movement, energy, the pleasure of living. Her holidays are intimate, intrafamily. They have peace and tenderness of loved ones, loving people. Irina Filatova