The exhibition of Dasha Kuznetsova "Who is my mother really"

A special project to support young art, START, has been trying different formats for ten years: this year, four curators were selected as an experiment for the first time in the history of the project. The first of them in the season 2018/2019, Ilya Smirnov will begin work with the exhibition of the artist Dasha Kuznetsova “Who is my mother really”.

“The practice of Dasha Kuznetsova combines interest in psychiatry and neuroscience with the practical study of mythological thinking. The main tool of the artist is an automatic drawing, which allows to transfer forms to paper, the source of which may be folklore, memory mechanics, sleep, and borderline states. Kuznetsova’s ruins, abandoned buildings, and fragments of the urban landscape hidden from everyday sight work as symbols of the unreflected zones of the human mind.

The personifications of mythical and natural forces are the main characters in this archaic environment. Who my mother really is deploying a two-dimensional medium of drawing in the field of sculpture. Through cult motifs, the artist turns the exhibition space into a ritual site where wood and fire become central mutually balancing elements, ”says curator of the exhibition Ilya Smirnov.

Dasha Kuznetsova (b. 1989). Lives and works in Moscow. Graduate of the Faculty of Graphic Arts, Moscow State University Ivan Fedorov, artist. Previous exhibitions: Forgotten Name, 2016, Center Red, Moscow; Today was a difficult day, 2018, Center Red, Moscow; After us, only ashes, 2018, Richter Project, Moscow.

Ilya Smirnov (b. 1984). Lives and works in Moscow. Graduate of the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, artist and curator, co-founder of Alyssa Davis Gallery, New York. Previous exhibitions: Mechanics Alley, 2015, 63rd – 77th STEPS, Bari; Il Futuro Era Bellissimo Per Noi, 2016, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris; The malignancy of stupidity: the cutest evil, 2017, Lily Robert, Paris; DOUBT (in collaboration with Vitaly Bezpalov), 2018, llil. space, Rostov-on-Don; Ruminations of the Midnight Stroll, 2018, No. 29 Marefield Gardens, London. Curatorial projects: Emma McMillan, Hard Times, What? 2017, Alyssa Davis Gallery, New York; Ed Fornieles, Sim Vol. 1, 2017, Alyssa Davis Gallery, New York; Dasha Kuznetsova, Today was a difficult day, 2018, Center Red, Moscow.

START is a unique platform that acts as a professional “elevator” for beginner young artists. For ten years, the START project website http://projectstart.ru received more than 50,000 applications, more than 60 personal exhibitions have been implemented.