| The best projects of the summer "ARTStrelka" The just opened new exhibition program of the ARTStrelka cultural center gives a good reason to think that the ability to be friends at all times has been and is the most correct art strategy. The gallery “ARTStrelka projects” has collected an exhibition called “Lisa and Friends”. Its main character was the famous curator, artist, art historian Liza Plavinskaya - a lady who seemed to have stepped out of the paintings of the artists of the Italian Proto-Renaissance, and, moreover, a representative of a glorious family - the daughter of the master of Moscow unofficial art Dmitry Plavinsky.
For this most unofficial art, the ability to make friends was in many ways a criterion of authenticity, synonymous with the quality of the creative process itself. Together with curator Alexandra Rudyk, Elizaveta tried to reproduce the blessed atmosphere of art friendliness. We collected the works of those who are dear to us: family friends of Dmitry Plavinsky - photographers Igor Palmin and Vadim Gippenreiter, as well as young colleagues - Kirill Assa, Rostan Tavasiev. It is interesting that the general mood of the exhibition was elegiac. The main theme is pastiche, but not postmodern - not in the mode of indifferent parody, but romantic - warmed by a living feeling, love for that distant time that you are trying to comprehend as your own, personal. Therefore, the juxtaposition of the Kamchatka photographic landscape of Gippenreiter, architectural photographic details of Palmin, cosmic hieroglyphs on the canvas of Dmitry Plavinsky and tea bags painted with strange graphic patterns, sealed in a transparent container by Alexander Brodsky, is justified, strange at first glance. This is the image of an intelligent conversation in the kitchen of a Soviet underground artist, when over tea it was interesting to talk about travel to the ends of the world and Russian cosmism. Lisa herself painted a realistic picture of some kind of VIA from the seventies, such that they performed in open areas in cultural parks. The style of painting (with cloudy drips and ocher colors) is reminiscent of hand-made posters for Soviet cinemas and concert halls. As a result, the project turned out to be about the reverent and sensitive experience of time, discovering oneself in its folds.
The same topic is brilliantly presented by the best exhibition of the current ARTStrelka, “The Walks of King Louis XIV,” created by photographer Natalya Zhernovskaya with the participation of artist Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe and Oleg Tsvetkov. Mrs. Zhernovskaya photographed the actor of the Russian art scene, Mr. Mamyshev-Monroe, made up as the Sun King Louis XIV. Together with his courtier (Oleg Tsvetkov), the king walks along the alleys of a regular park against the backdrop of magical rocaille architecture. In wigs with curls, in brocade camisoles, powdered and with flecks, he is beautiful with that doll-like beauty of a king from a fairy tale that the grateful memory of childhood has preserved for us. And this childhood memory in Natalya Zhernovskaya’s version is stylized as the work of those who knew how to create gentle kings best - the work of the masters of the World of Art society. The smartest and most educated Alexandre Benois loved to embroider the most exquisite patterns of his own mythology on the theme of the Versailles life of the Sun King. His watercolors depict the last walks of Louis XIV in the park of Versailles. King Benoit disincarnated into an ethereal shadow, not even a puppet, but a ghost. This is an allegory in reverse, when a visual image (the king himself) has become a speculative idea, replacing the actual function of the ceremonial. It is not for nothing that at lectures at Moscow State University, Professor Allenov, showing reproductions of Benoit’s watercolors, helped us see how the gilded fountain sculptures - baby putti - seem to mock the pale infirmity of the royal retinue walking next to the fountain: spinning and tumbling in the pool, made of bronze putti demonstrate human energy, cheerful and full-blooded.
For Zhernovskaya and Monroe, Benoit’s pastiche also came out as elegy and nostalgia. The photographs are hand-processed with pastels, and the picture seems to be covered with soft pink powder, through which we observe wonderful visions that are about to melt, crumble, and disappear. Pastel powder in the works of Zhernovskaya-Monroe behaves in the same way as the dust on Venetian mirrors in Joseph Brodsky’s essay. Both store the substance of time.
It’s great that the best project “ARTStrelka” was created by the VP Studio gallery, whose strategy is the talent of friendliness. Gathering excellent contemporary artists (from Olga Soldatova to Boris Matrosov), the owner of the gallery, Vera Pogodina, creates elegant, intimate, subtle exhibitions, designed for relaxed communication and confidential cordiality. That is why her gallery is so loved and welcomed by everyone. Sergei KHACHATUROV |
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