Translated material
“Saryn on the kitty!”
"Art-Storm" in Samara
The festival of contemporary art “Art-Storm” was held in Samara for the second time. Judging by the enthusiasm and drive with which the forum was held, its humorous slogan could well have been the cry “Saryn on the kitty!” - an order to the Volga robbers to lie on the bow of the ship (kichka) until the ship is “cleansed”. The organizer of the festival was the curator of the Victoria gallery Natalya Goncharova. Today, this gallery most actively and purposefully strives to hold events in Samara that initiate a vibrant artistic life.The central event of the “Art-Storm” was an exhibition of recent graduates of the St. Petersburg Mukhin Academy (Stiglitz Academy of Arts and Industry), members of the already well-known youth association “Unconquered” Ilya Gaponov, Kirill Koteshov, Tatyana Podmarkova and Andrei Gorbunov. The Victoria Gallery housed large-format paintings, the scope of which determined the scale of not even a gallery, but a museum level. The title of the exhibition is “Death.net?” set a certain angle for viewing and reading works that, at first glance, contain completely different “messages” in meaning, associated with the desire to understand eternal questions.
Indeed, how can one combine the black, as if smoky, canvases of Gaponov and Koteshov, in which the faces of miners are close-up, two meters high, with the stern dark faces of the saints from the iconostasis of impressive size, painted by them? Or complex interweaving of body parts: strong angles, powerful chiaroscuro, pathos, ecstasy, reminiscent of the paintings of Guido Reni and Michelangelo (paintings by Podmarkova), and an endless series of certain biological and anthropomorphic forms - gray and pink, in which one can discern a passion for the cold and inquisitive dissection of the living, in Gorbunov's polyptych? Obviously, the common thing is the desire of the authors to again turn to the anthropomorphic image, comprehending it from the position of a person of the 21st century.
Gaponov - Koteshov's face is a powerful visible image of human immortality. In their coal-bitumen (the colorful base is bitumen varnish, “Kuzbass-varnish”) images of childhood live - the artists were born and raised in Kemerovo, the capital of Kuzbass, where all the cities were built around mines. The snow on the faces of the saints in their works is not accidental: the artists remember how the streets, black from coal, were covered with a white canvas - it was a kind of cleansing. With the power and seriousness of their approach, these works make us remember the tradition - the painting of Nikolai Ge, Pavel Korin and Geliy Korzhev.
Tatyana Podmarkova in her series of works “Body Carriers” does without faces at all, deliberately focusing attention on the flesh - according to the artist, the shell of the soul. In surreal bioforms flowing into each other, reminiscent of anatomical preparations, where everything is separated and there is and cannot be any secret, Andrei Gorbunov, by his own admission, wants to discern the presence of a hidden “spiritual encoding”.
At the vernissage, the artists were the center of attention - the exhibition aroused extraordinary interest from the public and the media: the scale and seriousness of the young people’s creativity takes the perception of contemporary art to a completely new level. The label “young stars” given to the “rebels” is evidence of the expectation from contemporary art of new bright names, in particular those emerging in the provinces. In this sense, the arrival of St. Petersburg residents, natives of different cities of Russia, is like an invitation and at the same time a challenge for young Samara artists. And Samara also has its own rising stars, for example, video artist Vladimir Logutov (like Gaponov and Koteshov, a Kandinsky Prize nominee), who is already well known in Moscow. At the festival he performed in different roles. His works were at the exhibition in “XI Rooms” - that’s what the artists named their site, a basement in the city center, and together they organized opening days, parties, and lectures there. The idea is to unite those who want to speak the language of contemporary art freely and confidently in the future, moving away from both design and the salon. The curator of “The Unconquered,” who also works at Winzavod in Moscow, Nastya Shavlokhova, spoke about how young artists from the regions are now in demand in the capital. The video works of Logutov and Andrei Elagin were shown non-stop in one of the youth clubs. The name of one of them - No signal - well reveals the meaning of the others: working with a zero image, a kind of Zen minimalism.
One of the goals of the festival was the organization of projects with an active social orientation, when the artist draws attention to the glaring problems of the surrounding life. One of them is “Destroy or restore?” - was implemented right on the streets of the old city. Photographer Elena Egorova did a painstaking job: she photographed the “pearls” of Samara’s architecture, which were in a deplorable state, and made a selection of large-format photographs. The action with a direct appeal to Samara residents took place near the dilapidated house of the merchant Subbotin, built according to the design of the St. Petersburg architect Schreter at the end of the 19th century. The first art gallery was located in what was once the most beautiful building in the city. A walk through the historical part of Samara convinces of the relevance of this exhibition-action: relatively recently, a neoclassical mansion was set on fire (architect Shcherbachev), the original stucco molding of a house in the Art Nouveau style is collapsing literally before our eyes (architect Kleinerman), the amazing and fantastic dacha of a local merchant and philanthropist is in disrepair and dandy Golovkin. By the way, in 1898 Golovkin sent out 270 letters to famous Russian artists asking them to donate their works to the art collection, on the basis of which the museum was created.
On the main street, in the not yet fully renovated premises of the new art center “Artpropaganda”, with the support of the Alliance Française center, a traveling exhibition by Annie Ansulin (France) “Hands of Writers” opened. Artpropaganda has vague but ambitious plans to bring all the arts here - from live action and dance to photography, video and cinema. There is a plan to transfer the former grain elevator to the arts center, but it is still being discussed. Another “movement” “The future depends on you. New Rules" opened in a building donated to the Samara Art Museum. The exhibition is a kind of exemplary collection of works by contemporary Russian artists, presented by the Pierre Brochet Foundation and shown in eight cities of Russia - from Vladivostok to Kaliningrad. Who knows, maybe Golovkin’s idea of asking artists to donate their works will be appropriate and successful now. But this requires active work aimed at creating a new image of the city, where contemporary artists are loved and appreciated, provided with conditions for creative work, and provided with assistance.