Maria
Agureeva

“The sweatshirt refers to the topic of my research - ideas about the ideal human body that become a public convention. They spread through advertising and media and, as a result, become part of our consciousness.

In the modern world of self -design, we always evaluate the appearance of ourselves and others and cannot but reflect on this. At the same time, the boundaries of personal and public spaces have changed so much that it is no longer possible to determine them. And just this line is the field of my research. In this process, a reaction to the body is interesting to me - both our own and social environment, where verbalized or published judgments about your body materialize and become part of a personal look.

I have a video work in which I appear in a half-naked form in front of people from artis-artists, curators and gallerists. They criticize my body, they say that they would change and improve. For me, it was a psychologically complex experience that led to the emergence of new complexes. After him, I took off the casts from the most discussed parts of my body and created sculptures from polyester resin, in which these parts seem to flow one of the other. The original cast has an uneven surface caused by the imperfection of the human body with its folds, physiologism, materiality. I got rid of this as much as possible and made the perfect object with an artificial glossy surface.

For the sweatshirt, I also took the polyeshnic resin of physiological flowers. The resulting surface is also glossy, unnaturally improved. But this is just an abstract form, although it personally reminds me of internal organs. Initially, I wanted to cut holes in the areas of fabric, which were not flooded with resin, to emphasize the contrast between the organic maturity of the skin and the synthetic gloss of the resin. "

Ilya Fedotov-Fyodorov

“Now I am exploring the topic of preservation. I am especially interested in biological ways to preserve the living, for example, herbarium, insect collections, formalin flasks and other artifacts of kunstkamers, as well as the process and motivation of preservation. The glass objects of Kunstkamers and herbarium contain an incomparable aesthetics of sterility, which displaces everything superfluous, leaving a whole clean object - but lifeless.

When collecting a herbarium, we want to save and systematize the chamomile, dig it out of the ground, cultivate, carefully dry it, and we get a visual exhibit, which, in 200 years, maybe the only representative of this type of plant will remain.

But it is interesting that, preserving this chamomile, we leave it in a certain borderline state. It exists very similarly to a living, initial state, but of course, you can’t call it alive. The plant is completely torn from the ecological chain, but at the same time it actually did not disappear - it turns out so shameful, borderline, the substance of chamomile, which exists in the white leaf vacuum and exposed.

Practice of conservation can be transferred to the present and people who are its reflection.

I took my old herbarium (it was an “ordinary wart”) because of an unpleasant name-it is definitely not to become such a fashion model-let it look at me at least at me! And for some reason I had two of them-this also influenced my choice. In addition, the second gently collapsed when I clumsily put on a sweater.

I could not dwell on the clothing-German, because, working on a jacket, I realized that clothes also have stages of life. That is why I made two glass "formalin" vessels. In the large, the adult individual of the T -shirt froze, and in a small its initial form - a kind of egg - this is a alabaster cast made from a package in which they bought a T -shirt. "

Evgeny Gradeshchikov

“I was carried away by the Polaroids after the heavy filming of the film, which became for me the first experience in creating a full-length picture with a more or less serious approach to the image and script. But after the actor, who played the main role, suddenly left the project, my friend and operator Philip switched to the photograph, walked at night, shot something. I had a lot of cassettes for Polaroid, which remained after another project in Vladikavkaz. And I realized that I could freely spend them, shoot them like a phone.

There was an end of summer, still warm time, we walked around the city at night, periodically falling into trouble. The result was a series of more than 50 photos.

Today, for me, this work is connected with a strange, difficult time, which has become for me a kind of psychological rehabilitation period after failure with the film.

It was an intermediate moment in both my life and in artistic practice: before I did not turn to the photo so much. Once again, I realized that it doesn’t matter with which medium to work with. I never wanted the label of a video artist to be fixed for me.

A series of Polaroids came out dirty, rough, and this is the main thing in it. We see at the same time indifference to the material and love for it. The choice of Polaroida was almost accidental, but still it is difficult for me to imagine how I would make a similar series with another camera. The shooting on such a camera is always a gesture, such an action photography. We can say otherwise: it was a performance that resulted in a series of photographs. "

Natalia Timofeeva

“When I was offered to participate in the project, the first thought was to endow the sweatshirt with the qualities that are characteristic of a person. So, initially devoid of any identity, the thing is endowed with metaphysical meaning, turning into an independent object. In this case, an object-media translating my sensuality, inner emotional instability.

This is an attempt to separate the profane sphere of consumption from the immaterial internal state, while the visualization of one uses the qualities of the other. So, it is no coincidence that color and size are chosen - black, the largest sweater is turned inside out and fixed so that a void forms inside it, focusing on itself, when the folds of the fabric, glue forms and manifests the lack of presence!

The result was a surprise, since it was impossible to predict in advance how the material would behave under the influence of processing. The main task was to expose what was hidden when the external orderliness and seemingly no different from the bulk of the mass can be seen completely different properties, character, mood.

This is more about the situation. The inverted world of everyday becomes a symbol of an insecure, complex, often doubtful person, and the thing used turns into self -reflection. ”

Jan Tamkovich

“In Moscow, on the Shchelkovo highway, where the flyover is being built, there used to be a green strip that separated the road in half, as on the canvases of Barnett Newmann. There were so few cars that it was possible to calmly cross the road. Golyanovo was an ecologically clean area, but now in the summer it is difficult to imagine a meeting even with ili or bee.

I was inspired by the construction in another place on the shape of the object, on the Kashirsky highway, the denouement of which was made in the form of a butterfly.

The eyes on the wings of the butterfly remind me of one case from childhood, when I looked at the hole in the stone for a long time and from there in weak lighting a couple of eyes was visible. I watched as bewitched, and could not move away for a very long time. I think it was a snake. ”

Look at Me thanks Photo Photoplay for help in organizing the shooting.

Maria Agureeva

Ilya Fedotov-Fyodorov

Evgeny Gradeshchikov

Natalia Timofeeva

Jan Tamkovich

Maria
Agureeva

Transformation of banal: young artists rethink clothes