"Living and non-living construction"

From November 27 to December 26, 2019, East Meets West Gallery opens a series of exhibitions at the ARTPLAY Design Center with the general theme “Living and Inanimate Nature”.

An introduction to this topic was the exposition of one of the halls of the anniversary exhibition dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the gallery in the All-Russian Museum of Decorative Art “Between Heaven and Earth”, part II, which closed on October 10, 2019.

The new exhibition is called "Living and non-living construction." It will demonstrate graphic and easel work by Moscow artists Yulia Malinina and Ilya Seregin, which combines going beyond a specific figurative thematic drawing and painting into a philosophical generalization, cleansing from small details, unnecessary layers to an almost “bare” construct on the way to a concrete almost conceptual idea.

Julia Malinina is an excellent graphic artist who can draw detailed and thorough details of an object in space. Her early graphic sheets only outline the future focus of the author on factory architecture. But the author’s main interest is already traced in them - the cleaned design and shape of the object, and not the details of the picture or color shades. The structural basis of her works - architecture, especially in the post-industrial era - has not only a symbolic meaning in it, determining the relationship between epochs and times, but also reaches the level of epic generalization, such as in the works “My Beautiful Castle” (2017) or “ Empty ”(2016). The post-industrial era debunked the dreams and utopias of modernist industrial architecture at the beginning of the 20th century about the paramount importance of the industrial revolution in the development of mankind.

The polytype of Yulia Malinina “Requiem” (2017) is dedicated to this topic. On the one hand, it shows with nostalgia and sadness the huge industrial objects that have lost their functionality, and on the other, it welcomes their transition to the rank of monuments of the era comparable to museums.

Ilya Seregin in the works we have selected also chooses a rather mean color scheme. The whole philosophical moment of generalizing the relationship between him and the world is most often realized in the composition of his work, for example, in the work of “Poplar M”, (2018). She also “cleanses” the author to the point of abstraction, seeking to express one conceptual idea. Choosing landscape as the main theme, Ilya Seregin also remains within the framework of the strict style of minimalism. However, in recent years, his restrained, earthy palette has been increasingly supplemented by bright colors, symbolizing the optimistic attitude of the author towards life. In recent graphic and easel works, his “visual geometry” has become more diverse, his experiments are especially interesting: from the choice for cardboard and wood for a large monumental form, as, for example, in the works “Untitled” (2016), “Cottage Village” (2016) to an almost intimate figurative picture, which also lays down the principles of a more serious indirect attitude to the landscape “Fir-trees and Birches” (2017), “Autumn II” (2017).

Some of these thoughts are clearly expressed in the objects of Maria Kalmykova and Maxim Protsenko . When it became cramped within the framework of the traditional sculptural material, wood waste, stones, metal rods, nails and various other recyclables were used.

The "living" objects of Maria Kalmykova and Maxim Protsenko have a clear constructive basis. The simplicity of their form, structural organization, and the use of natural materials make it possible to attribute them to ecological architecture, such as, for example, Fish objects (2009); “Hedgehog with citrus” (2007) M. Kalmykova; “Praryba” (2017) M. Protsenko.

For Maxim Protsenko, the moment of the “game” is often important on the contradiction of the living image of the object and the material from which it is made. This is observed in the works of “Beetle” (2018), “Overgrowth” (2019). In the objects of Maria Kalmykova there is more generalized, symbolic meaning, often even a sign, than a realistic image of a living object, as for example in the work “Fish” (2009).

The design and structural approach to the plastic image is often implemented by artists in joint works. Maria Kalmykova: “It’s extremely interesting for me to work in a pair, since each of us contributes to the creation of a common work… The works we have done together are signed by M + M, which creates some game moment.”

The curator of the exhibition is Tatyana Paleeva.

The exhibition runs at the ARTPLAY Design Center from November 27 to December 26, 2019.

Daily from 12.00 to 20.00. Free admission.