Translated material
Harvest Cathedral
Igor Makarevich and Elena Elagina deal with the “Russian idea”
“Orthodoxy, autocracy, nationality” - the famous formula invented by Sergius Uvarov, Minister of Public Education under Nicholas the First, almost never lost its relevance. Today, Uvarov’s formula (and the doctrine behind it) is simply at the peak of popularity. The exhibition of the honored masters of Moscow conceptualism, the married couple Igor Makarevich and Elena Elagina, that opened in the XL Gallery is called “Russian Idea”. In this project, the first version of which was shown in the Dom-Art gallery as part of the II Moscow Biennale, the artists, as always, not without a bit of slyness and irony, talk about the primordial Russian idea of Sobornost, trying to find its plastic expression adequate to the present day.The gallery space is divided into two parts by a large metal triangle, reminiscent of both the double prison bars and the sailing mast of a ship. One can come up with many interpretations of this abstract symbol, which is given so much space in the exhibition - from a staircase leading to the sky, to Suprematist structures and objects of Tatlin, which usually act as calling cards of Russian art in the West. In front of this structure, on a pedestal, there is an abstract bronze sculpture with six tube-like branches. It imitates bread crumb. Elena Elagina talks about her childhood impressions, when her mother sculpted such a six-pointed star from a bread crumb, which, when it dried, could be safely thrown on the floor and trampled underfoot, but nothing happened to it. In addition to this “crumb”, the hall also contains bronze sculptures depicting loaves of black bread. In the far corner of the gallery there is a mountain of earth. This is also a rather speculative symbol - an archetype of motherhood, homeland, well-being.
On the long wall hang portraits of the adherents and founders of the “Russian Idea” in the title: Uvarov, Dostoevsky, Solovyov, Berdyaev... And all would be fine, but among the great thinkers and writers, including the unfortunate passengers of the “philosophical ship”, a portrait was found the newly-minted Russian messiah Grigory Grabovoi. This “mistake” confuses the apologetic pathos. It becomes clear that the exhibition’s authors are more than skeptical about the “Russian idea.”
At the end of the hall there is a large stand filled with identical loaves of black bread. This antique cabinet is a symbol of the philistinism that appropriated the idea of “conciliarity.”
Makarevich and Elagina often reflect on dying or degeneration in their works. Their elegant, decadent opuses about the Soviet Pinocchio, about “mushroom” architectonics (exhibition “Pagan”), sculptures made of dust leave no doubt that no matter what thought the artists utter, no matter how pretentious the initial idea, a wormhole will creep into their reasoning. , a small parasite that ultimately corrodes pathos to dust and mold. Moscow conceptualists are true to themselves this time too. The only thing that prevents you from completely falling into despondency is the “preparedness” of the exhibition itself: minimalistic, precisely staged, elegant. The beauty with which the artists talk about the archetypes of Russian reality, about collective neuroses, once again proves: no matter how old, museum-like, dusty the conceptualist canon may seem, it is still alive and not completely exhausted.