Exhibition "City:
environment, buildings, characters"

From December 18 to February 4 at the residence of arts and technology "KvartRiata" in Peterhof will be an exhibition of Cyril Agranovsky and Nadia Albul "City: environment, buildings, characters."

From December 18 to February 4, the exhibition "City: Wednesday, Buildings, Characters" will be held in Peterhof. Artists Cyril Agranovsky and Nadia Albul are exploring a new, unexplored space of the QuartRiata residence in the Garden of Kron’s dacha. The idea of a synthesis of arts and technology, embodied in the residence, attracts artists as researchers. Agranovsky’s modular graphics and animation with Albul objects are combined with an urban focus and industrial aesthetics.

The base point for the formation of the project was the modernist idea of the French curator, art critic and art critic Nicolas Burrio that art is developing in parallel with technological progress. Technology is changing the aesthetics, setting the boundaries between the real and the imaginary. The interpenetration of technological and humanistic components forms a complex structure of the environment where a person lives: he works and is lazy, creates and destroys. When considering the synthetic pair “art-technique”, artists are born new forms of formation, thoughts and visions.

Modular graphics of Cyril Agranovsky is a small plot story. The combination of fragments forms a single and coherent frame-by-frame story with a plot. Modules are a kind of storyboard, the forerunner of animated films. Animation plots logically develop thoughts about the industrial environment, about the character and the stories that happen to him. In an attempt to come close to studying the linear form of the industrial landscape-portrait and one-day sketch, Agranovsky takes as the starting point the inescapability, inhumanity, and sometimes hostility of the environment. The artist considers the titanium plant as a driving force that accelerates the universal motor of life. The titan is fallen, rising and walking - these three phases are endless, merge into one huge continuous action, directed to infinity. The character of Kolya, on the contrary, seems to be an inconspicuous layman who could very well be a simple factory worker. At the junction of the three elements - the plant, the man and the tree - a conflict arises, a drama of movement, a new form of life. That is what is the subject of study and increased attention of the artist.

Nadia Albul works with objects that are themselves modular. They are easily assembled into various installation options, transforming and working with space. This is the constructor from which new forms are created, represented by one part or a combination of them. It contains the ability to interact with the viewer, who acts not only as an observer, but also as a participant in the process. Albul represents objects synthetically combined into an installation, one of the components of which is the viewer. Under certain lighting conditions, objects create shadows on the walls. Mirrors reflect the environment, creating a field for the interaction of the environment and the viewer, the audience with each other, looking with himself.

The choice of the ground floor of the QuartRiata art and technology residence for exhibiting the project is not accidental: the artists were interested in the non-residential, undeveloped space, which, if they go down, is especially necessary. Named the basement, it is, on the one hand, a fundamental construction. On the other hand, it is almost always hidden from view and bearing rather a technical function, it is devoid of a design component.

“The basement is not a place for games,” parents teach the children. “Why not?” The artists say.