Exhibition of Andrei Grositsky "The Order of Things"

The new exhibition season of the ARTSTORY gallery will open with the exhibition of works by the classic of Russian contemporary art Andrei Grositsky, The Order of Things, which will be held from September 19 to November 10, 2019. The project is dedicated to the 85th anniversary of the artist.

The artist’s focus is on the most ordinary things - household items, peeling walls, old musical instruments, keys, locks, and sometimes just pieces of rusty metal. And although the model, as a rule, is an object, it would be wrong to call his works still lifes, because Grositsky does not “portray” a thing as it is, but transforms it, endowing it with a new meaning, revealing its “secret” beauty and essence. It is important to note that in order to convey his vision of the objective world surrounding us, he creates his own plastic language — visitors to the exhibition will immediately notice that some things “go beyond” the usual canvas format — all things live in a vast space, as if they were cramped in a closed frame. The paintings, as it were, strive to become sculptures. At the same time, “despite the rough textures that Grositsky used as nature for his work, his work is imbued with incredible tenderness and compassion for the world around him,” says curator of the exhibition Natalya Grositskaya.

From these vivid images, Grositsky builds a whole universe, falling into which you involuntarily start to see the world differently, finer, brighter, more poetic - as Mayakovsky once said: “Could you play a nocturne on a flute of drainpipes?” An opportunity to hear how it is it happens that the visitors of the exhibition “Andrey Grositsky. The order of things. "

Sometimes this world is compared with the now forgotten space, born in unofficial art of the mid-1920s and called the “new materiality”.

The exhibition will show works of different periods, including works that have either never been exhibited, or exhibited a very long time and once. Among such works are “Butaforia” (1984), “The Big Switch” (1991), “Espagnolette” (1995), “This Is Not a Hat” (2004). Along with this, the exhibition will feature works that the author himself considered landmark for himself and which occupy a special place among his works - this is “Family” (1970-71) “Unit No. 7” (1988), “Red Paint” )1996) and, of course, “Objects and Sky” (1980-81), about which the famous art critic Vitaly Patsyukov wrote: “In one of his best compositions, one might say programmed,“ Objects and Sky ”, the artist offers us to look at objects as if from the point of their absolute value in front of the absolute sky, as a living part of the universe. All these things that are tired of work: a hat, a jug, a briefcase, a candle, a violin, a telephone - no longer need their functionality. They are illuminated by the special radiance of eternity, they are preserved in our memory forever, a new dimension opens in them - the existential depth. The thing here is not used as an object and is not interpreted as a sign, it means that it is, that it exists and will remain so in the human mind. ”

Andrei Borisovich Grositsky (1934–2017) graduated from the Moscow State Art Institute named after V.I. Surikova in 1959

1960s - The beginning of the formation of stylistics and a creative position among the artists of the Moscow underground, which included I. Kabakov, E. Bulatov, I. Chuikov, Yu. Zlotnikov, B. Turetsky.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s Grositsky came to the most significant stage of his work, focusing on the subject as an object of study and began to develop his own plastic language, which later became his "calling card". The artist’s work has become an integral part of the art of domestic non-conformism. An appeal to the world of a thing, its metaphysical image, the transition to a laconic and generalized color, and characteristic plasticity of the image gave reason to mention Grositsky among the founders of “Russian pop art” and made his painting recognizable not only in Russian art, but also on a global scale.

Grositsky’s works are in the largest museum collections, including the Pushkin Museum, the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Russian Museum, the MMOMA, the Zimmerly Museum (New Jersey, USA), a number of regional museums in Russia and many private collections around the world.

About Grositsky

V. Patsyukov:

“In one of his best compositions, one might say programmatic,“ Objects and Sky ”in 1981, the artist suggests that we look at objects from the point of their absolute Value in front of the absolute sky, as a living part of the Universe. All these things that are tired of work: a hat, a jug, a briefcase, a candle, a violin, a telephone - no longer need their functionality. They are illuminated by the special radiance of eternity, they are preserved in our memory forever, a new dimension opens in them - the existential depth. The thing here is not used as an object and is not interpreted as a sign, it means that it is, that it exists and will remain so in the human mind. ”

E. Barabanov:

“In the biographies of things of Grositsky, the situation of being is twofold: the creative birth of the previously invisible is accompanied by the illusion of the known, warning of the disappearance of the visible. Attention to this duality - attention equally alien to both the avant-garde and retrospective - permeates all the art of the artist. Here, perhaps, there is a hidden point of contact with Rainer’s world outlook, Maria Rilke, for whom all the worlds of the universe collapsed “into the invisible, as into their nearest deeper reality”.

Ivan Chuykov:

“Unfortunately, I did not see his last works in the original, or rather, his last exhibitions, only individual works and, of course, reproductions. What I saw was very interesting to me and seemed very important in our art.

First of all, the most obvious is the choice of an object, an object so insignificant, unimportant, as it were, an unworthy image: an electric meter, a rag, a garbage bin, etc. This is not a godsend any discovery, but nobody has done that with us. We have more about the sacred, about myths - affirming or exposing. And, what’s important, Andrei’s is not so much for ideological reasons (although this decrease in motive is also interesting and important), but for fundamentally formal, deep reasons. Andrei wrote these insignificant objects, it seems to me because his painting was about painting, about the essence, the secret of the image, about how it appears on the plane of the picture. And he needed to penetrate this secret, and not distract him with literature, pathos, and the beauty of objects. That is why the second feature of Andrei’s work is objects that get out of the edge of the canvas and violate the rectangular format of the picture. After all, the usual, traditional format is, in fact, a screen onto which an image is projected from one side or the other, creating an illusion. When this screen is destroyed or questioned, when “weighty, rude, visibly” material is offered, the basis of the created illusion, then this illusion and gross reality begin to balance, flicker. The viewer needs to decide for himself what he is looking at: at the electric meter or at the picture.

The traditional picture does not offer a choice - you look at the birch forest, sea surf or beautiful apples, not to mention the girls.

But this is somehow somehow not really believed - an illusion, a fiction. But without cheating - it is done like this.

In all artists, in any case dealing with the image, this feeling of mystery, magic, witchcraft of the possibility of the image lives, and a serious, thinking artist has to deal with it. Everyone does it his own way. Andrei found his way and did it wonderful.

You can, of course, write more - explaining it, but here, from my point of view, the main thing. ”

Nikita Makhov:

“Andrei Grositsky is the brightest representative in Russian art of the present time of the line that in the mid-1920s was called the“ new materiality ”or“ magical realism ”. Andrei Grositsky embodied what really was the most valuable in the “new materiality” image, which carries the meaning of not only a specific image, but the whole world. In fact, such a painting is a true abstraction in the paradigmatic conceptual sense of the word.

The work of Andrei Grositsky - the faces of things. This is precisely the spiritualized phenomenon of a thing, that thing behind which there is actually a deep metaphysics, which in fact can only be expressed in figurative art and only plastic art. ”

Natalia Pomerantseva:

“Grositsky has a perfect sense of material in any of its transformations, whether it be smooth surfaces or torn, spiky pieces of cold tin. It has a wide and varied range of textured techniques - from a single smear to rough patches of paint that create a deep semantic contrast. He uses the tricks of illusory, giving things tangible bulge.

Reflecting on the work of A. Grositsky, one recalls the words of the great Leonardo, who once said that it is impossible to unravel the world, it can only be made up. And in most of his works, Grositsky makes a world for himself and for the audience. The subject world, which makes up the main theme of paintings, is usually called a still life, but the definition of this genre is not applicable to Grositsky’s work, because his work went far beyond the genre and style. We can talk about the style of Grositsky himself, since the artist paves new ways in contemporary art, speaking of the world in a language that no one spoke before him.

ARTSTORY Gallery: Moscow, Staropimenovsky per., D. 14 (metro Tverskaya, Mayakovskaya). Every day, except Mondays, from 12.00 to 20.00. Admission by ticket (200 rubles; for people under 18 years old - 100 rubles; for children under 7 years of age, pensioners and privileged categories - for free).