Exhibition "The Endless Road to ... Part I"

On October 8, 2015, at the All-Russian Museum of Decorative, Applied and Folk Art, together with EAST MEETS WEST GALLERY, an art project "The Endless Road to… Part I" opens.

The carriage gallery of the All-Russian Museum of Decorative, Applied and Folk Art will present the works of the artist Natalya Zarovna, an outstanding representative of the generation of “geometric” abstraction of the late XX - early XXI century.

Series of her works “Point”, “Terminal. Antwerp ”,“ New Province ”or“ Garages-sheds ”can be attributed to the topic“ Architecture ”, which the author has been developing for a long time and comprehensively. But for her, architecture is more of a symbolic sign, a “form of utopian consciousness,” rather than a simple object of image. The dynamics and rhythm of these works, their structural-plastic composition, which is based on the lattice, allow us to search and find the formal sources of her work in Russian constructivism and in the philosophical ideas of Suprematism by Kazimir Malevich. Creating signs-images of material life, it also rises from the material to the spiritual and further to the higher unconscious. “I understand abstraction as an opportunity to change the focus of vision, to penetrate the structure of an object or phenomenon,” Natalya Zarovnaya.

This is especially pronounced in the new series of works by Natalia Zarovna “Transformers”, 2015. Using the philosophy and technical capabilities of etching, the author individualizes each work, working with different types of paper, creating internal volumes of structures with double and triple overlay sheets, using the mixed etching technique, then a collage that gives each new work its unique stylistic features.

The works of Vladimir Peldyakov are rather plastic sketches or small finished models of monumental works that are possible in the future, but have not yet happened. The formalization of the process of their creation was set by the size of the work and the simplicity of the materials chosen by the author (wood, rope, metal mesh). In two works, the author uses different directions of the development of plastic sculpture, dating back to modernism and to the Russian avant-garde of the early 20th century. The work “Horizontal Structures” refers more to “geometric” abstraction, the sculpture “Walking” is a more ambiguous work. Its plastic construction, reminiscent of a male figure, as a designer is assembled from rectangular bars, turned to the viewer each time with new faces. The cubist figure of the “Walking” does not seem static, it is all in motion and is directed forward, exactly responding to the artist’s desire to break beyond one style.

The second part of the exhibition is located in the park area of the museum. It includes the new work of Alexei Dyakov, specially created for the VI Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, and the project by the sculptors Olga Khan and Andrei Mitenev “Prepared Pianos”.

In the work of Aleksey Dyakov, “The Limit of the Possible” - three wooden trunks rising upward is a symbolic allegory of the life of three friends, two of whom “burn out” on the path to perfection and self-expression, not reaching the top, and only one of them, reaching the goal, spiritual and physical expression realizes his dream and begins to radiate light, illuminating the road after going.

The idea of the project of Andrei Mitenev and Olga Khan “Prepared Pianos” was born in 2013. According to the authors, on the one hand, thanks to the desire to implement a purely plastic idea: to create a new sculpture - an object from the fragments of a piano, dissecting it and dissecting it into details; on the other hand, influenced by their enthusiasm for experimental and new music, especially the avant-garde compositions of John Cage and his Russian followers.

The first thing in this Piano series is perhaps most of all a sculpture in the traditional sense of the word. Now many contemporary artists believe that they are followers of Marcel Duchamp and call their works objects, fearing that sculpture is an outdated and anachronistic concept.

Andrei Mitenev had every formal reason to “write down” the newly recreated sculpture from a piano divided into details into a thing and become a direct “heir” to the dada or neo-dada of Duchamp’s ideas. But the figure of a pianist intoxicated by music and symbolic huge hands reaching for the deck create an integral plastic sculptural composition - a symbol of unity, merging of a musician with an instrument. Andrei Mitenev and Olga Khan achieve even more symbolism and abstraction in the joint work of Trio-1 and Trio-2. The structural elements in both sculptures are the same as in the first work, but the elements of the avant-garde heritage are more clearly visible in them, such as in the ratios of the vertical and horizontal construction of elements, as well as in the coloristic solution of objects.