Genes of place

The Permm Museum of Modern Art has been opened Exhibition of Swiss artists Gerda Steiner and Yorga Lenzlinger. “Picnic” is a total installation that you can watch, listen, touch and sniff. And most importantly - to contemplate.

The entrance to the exhibition is curtained by the fabric. Going to the museum, the viewer does not know what he will see. This is part of the intrigue or trap: their artists inventively placed on all three floors of the Permm museum. Going out of the wardrobe, you fall into the darkened space with flashes of video art on the screens. The screens rotate, they are made of tulle for curtains. You can consider images on them, or you can - the texture of the fabric itself. Mirrors suspended to the ceiling rotate. Pieces of film tied to the picket fence of branches are swaying. In the video, worms are intertwined, sheep graze in alpine meadows, microorganisms of water live their own separate liquid life. Here everything breathes and moves, capturing the viewer into a visual dynamic cycle.

The first floor is generally similar to a dance floor. But as a soundtrack, a buzzing noise is used here. And so that the head from the abundance of images does not spin, the audience is offered to take a breath on benches. But not for long. In a special compartment, a new attraction awaits them - organic installation. Several plastic basins are suspended to the ceiling. Of these, the threads descend to the podium, forming a bizarre salt lake. The installation will grow and change up to the closure of the exhibition. So, the viewer will have a chance to observe her in different stages of “growing up”. Under the only condition - the museum employees need to saturate the basin in time with salt solution in time.

The second part of the exhibition is sharply different from the first. For this, artists needed to radically change the space of the second floor. If earlier windows were closed here to get the perfect museum “white cube”, then for the “picnic” artists broke partitions. The space has gained a similarity with a crazy kindergarten or a bizarre chillout (after all, if the first floor is an unbridled disco, then it is logical to arrange a recreation area on the second). On the walls, animation drawings, as in preschool institutions or children's clinics. The windows have high catwalks with soft pillows. By the way, thanks to the stained windows, the fourth dimension appeared at the installation - a snowy Perm. The viewer has the opportunity to relax and think in which space is more comfortable for him: in a fictitious, affecting acid colors, or what is outside the windows - unfriendly and cold.

Several plastic basins are suspended to the ceiling. Of these, the threads descend to the podium, forming a bizarre salt lake. The installation will grow and change up to the closure of the exhibition.

However, looking out the windows is not at all. The entire space of the second floor is inhabited by installations-explosions. Artists have created a special environment where the artificial is intertwined with natural. Giant "stars" from dried stalks of hogweed. Stones, trees, salt installations - but already acidic colors. They are inhabited by fantastic plants and bizarre insects made of sweets, wrappers, broken TV, computer and telephone remains. Organic here is pretended to be artificial, and artificial - organic. Bright flowers seem artificial, but, going closer, you understand that this is not so. Natural shades, on the contrary, are completely artificial and man -made.

Swiss artists Gerda Steiner and Yorg Lenzlinger began to create a total installation in February this year, when they first arrived in Perm. The method of artists is called Site-Specific , which means that their art is closely related to the topics, specifics of the place. The peculiarity of the method is that the work is created in a specific space with which it is organically connected. At the opening of the exhibition, the artists unanimously stated that they did not bring any blanks with them - they did everything here from local materials. By the way, they were helped by Perm schoolchildren who went with a friendly pionerator with the Swiss through the Perm forests for the “Perm poor” - borshshik, roots, stones and other natural materials.

According to artists, the exhibition "has a deep connection with the nature and history of the Perm Territory." But in order to recognize the “genes” of the place, a remarkable imagination will be required. The only part of the exhibition that has no doubt about the “deep connection” with the place is the third floor where the artists equipped the bearish roles for winter hibernation. At the entrance to the hall, the viewer can change into a bear costume (they are ranked in size - from adults to children) and lie down in a suitable rooster - an inverted boat, a hut of cardboard boxes, a giant fragment of a steel pipe or in a tourist tent. It is easy to recognize the irony of Swiss artists: in winter, Perm (by the way, the bear is one of the symbols of the city that is present on the coat of arms of the region) and Permians really look inhibited and unfriendly, so this time of the year is better to sleep. And when you see dreams, they can be recorded - the benefit is equipped with a table with written accessories in the corner.

Having visited the “picnic”, you still do not believe that Swiss artists made this exhibition. It would be more logical to imagine that this is the work of the California "funny pranksters" led by Ken Kizi. And Grateful Dead could have voiced this electro -processing acid test - however, Jerry Garcia has long been dead.