Exhibition of Ivan Yazykov "Country of disposable things"

From February 15 to March 31, the Museum of Moscow will host an exhibition of the Moscow graphic artist Ivan Yazykov “The Land of One-Time Things” on the problem of the relationship between man and the world of one-time things. Instead of people in the paintings, the main roles are played by disposable objects, finding their own face and character. At the exhibition, for the first time, viewers will be able to see the large-scale composition “Repair of disposable things”, on which the artist worked from 2014 to 2017.

The main goal of the artist is to draw attention to how everyday habits and people’s attitudes toward ecology have changed over the generations. A few decades ago, in an era of total shortage, our grandparents had in stock a whole arsenal of ways to save and repair things. Today, life offers a person countless cheap disposable items, simplifying, but at the same time emasculating, the process of their use.

Protecting and appreciating does not mean just using it carefully. This means understanding the structure of objects, being able to disassemble, glue, retouch, and at the same time make a stop, concentrate, spend time to restore the human world to the objective world, rather than the stamped-averaged look, and, as a result, restore the human look to ourselves. This is the idea that the artist Ivan Yazykov and curator Evgenia Kikodze want to convey to the viewer.

The center of the exhibition will be the premiere screening of the painting “Repair of disposable items.” The artist worked on this composition with a size of 1.5 to 2 meters for three years. Also, viewers will be able to see Yazykov’s works from the “Lead” series - so named by the author by analogy with Italian paintings of the 18th century on urban and everyday topics. In addition, a number of so-called microdramas, small genre illustrations, will be presented at the exhibition.

Artist Ivan Yazykov: “Man-made labor is worthy of contemplation. Street watchmakers, stalls for repairing mobile phones and laptops, shoe repair shops, small ateliers and even the process of cooking street shawarma have always fascinated with their comfort and the feeling that this is a workshop where a person is a master, respectively. ”

Curator of the exhibition Evgenia Kikodze: “We are pleased to do this exhibition right here, in the Museum of Moscow. The ideology and principles of collecting the museum’s collections are traditionally focused on the everyday life of citizens, so we share the concern of Ivan Yazykov and we want to draw the attention of Muscovites to the problem of material heritage disappearing before our eyes, to call for slow and meaningful consumption, as well as for love and revaluation of all those little things in life that surround us and fill our day. ”

Ivan Yazykov was born in Moscow in 1975. In 2001 he graduated from MGHPU named after S.G. Stroganov, where he studied graphic design. Now Languages works not only as an artist, but also as a poet and DJ. In 1999, he began to write his “Alphabet” - a series of paintings, each of which is dedicated to a separate letter. This work is very painstaking - it takes about a year to create each image, and the work has not yet been completed. In parallel, the artist makes the illustrated collection "Microdrama - 365", where each poem tells a short life story. Languages took part in many festivals and exhibitions of contemporary art both in Russia and abroad, including Moscow Cosmoscow, Arte Fiera in Bologna, French Art Paris Art Fair and many others.