21.10.24, 17:34 2024-10-21T17:34:42+03:00
The key project of the season was Igor Shelkovsky’s large-scale retrospective exhibition “Heavenly City. Artist’s Workshop”. Shelkovsky is an outstanding contemporary artist and sculptor, a classic of Russian and world art. However, many know him primarily as the editor and publisher of the legendary magazine “A-Ya”, thanks to which, during perestroika, the whole world discovered contemporary Russian art on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Igor Shelkovsky’s works, often left in the shadow of his publishing activities, continue the traditions of the Russian avant-garde by simplifying natural forms. , the artist takes them to maximum purity and explores the transformation of forms. The exhibition presents more than 600 works by Shelkovsky and his famous workshop, which was moved to the museum for the duration of the exhibition. The studio space is a work of art. total, uninterrupted in its development. In this “heavenly city”, the garden city, Shelkovsky embodies a model of the universe based on the universal laws of nature and world harmony.
Photo from the exhibition “Celestial City. Artist’s workshop” Photo from the exhibition “Celestial City. “Artist’s workshop”
Viewers are used to seeing works by Nikolai Polissky in the vast expanses of Nikola-Lenivets, but “Electroart” is a rare project of the artist, created specifically for the museum space, a neutral white cube. It is a plastic metaphor of a modern metropolis, in which cables, visible to the eye and hidden from it, permeate the urban space, like blood vessels, ensuring its normal existence. Polissky himself, commenting on this work, recalls the “cargo cult”, a religious movement in Melanesia, whose adherents build replicas of transport planes from palm trees and straw, bringing them gifts from heaven. Like the Melanesians, Polissky tries to understand the technogenic world around him, without immersing himself in the mechanisms of its operation. “This world is incredibly complex for me, even too complicated,” says the artist. “So I’m trying to become friends with him somehow by doing a project like this.”
Nikolay Polissky, installation “Electroart”, 2024 Nikolay Polissky, installation “Electroart”, 2024
Pavel Pepperstein, one of the brightest and most famous Russian artists, appeared at MAMM this fall as an illustrator. In 2020 and 2024, V–A–C Press published Lewis Carroll’s stories about Alice’s adventures with her drawings. At the exhibition you can see the original sketches and learn what these images look like in color, as the books are mostly filled with “outlined” versions of them. A series of illustrations from “Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass” are presented in different spaces, and to be transported from one fairy tale to another, the viewer must pass through a portal of mirrors, trying on the role of Alice. . According to Pavel Pepperstein, he feels the universes of these works in completely different ways: “Wonderland” is a world of cards, that is, free and unpredictable combinatorics, and “Through the Looking Glass” is a world of chess, symmetry. and logical patterns. However, the dreamlike atmosphere, full of paradoxes, metamorphoses and games of scale that reigns in both fairy tales, is reflected in the design of both exhibition rooms. Especially for this project, based on ready-made illustrated sketches, the artist painted several paintings and a fresco. By observing how different the same image looks in a camera graphic work and its much larger pictorial version, we can feel approximately the same as Alice, who experienced multiple increases and decreases in height. And the elements of suprematist designs in the paintings refer to mathematical principles common to Carroll’s texts and this direction of avant-garde art. The immersion in fantasy worlds is completed by the intelligent voice assistant “Alice”, which reads fairy tales aloud to the audience.
Pavel Pepperstein, illustrations from the series “Alice Through the Looking Glass”, 2023 Pavel Pepperstein, illustrations from the series “Alice Through the Looking Glass”, 2023
Evgeny Muzalevsky’s painting largely develops the traditions of abstract expressionism. It is made up of “thousands of nerve endings”, creating complex shapes and a special luminosity. The content of the artist’s works is similar to the content of a personal diary, in which experiences are dressed in picturesque images and transformed into visual poetry that eludes literal reading. Muzalevsky prepared part of the exhibition together with his mother, thoughts about which are permanently present in his work. It all started when my mother was in a general regime colony. Evgeniy came up with a certain kind of therapy, the result of which was a penetrating and masterfully executed embroidery by the artist’s mother, repeating a series of vertical canvases of her son.
Evgeny Muzalevsky, “Fools”, 2022 Evgeny Muzalevsky, “Bizeshka Cake” 2022; “Reflection”, 2022; “Olga”, 2023; “Nastya at the window”, 2023; “Trideshka”, 2023. The embroidery based on the artist’s work was made and named by his mother.
Vladimir Mishukov’s “If I Were…” series, shot in 2012, continues the photographer’s already established format of a conceptual portrait combined with a short interview. In 2003, he received the “Silver Camera” for the project “Neon Dreams”, the heroes of which were teenagers who were just entering adulthood and shared their dreams and plans with the photographer. The “If I were…” project gives the voice to the next generation: very young children, drowned in their parents’ enormous jackets and dresses, talk about what it is like to be a father or mother. 12 years have passed since the creation of the series, and today its heroes have already become teenagers and adults, and some, probably, parents. It is interesting to know if they follow his precepts, like seven-year-old Leo, who told Mishukov: “If I were a father, I would live and move.”
Vladimir Mishukov, “If I were a father, I would live and move”, 2012
Andrey Gordasevich is one of the most diverse Russian photographers of our time. His portfolio includes images from numerous travels (the geography is impressive: from Komi to Burundi), sketches of the life of subcultures (from football fans to historical reenactors) and sophisticated macro-portraits of Zoological Museum exhibits. Each of his projects requires a unique form, based on a specific plot, and “Havana” is no exception. By portraying Cubans whose entire lives, as Gordasevich points out, take place “with open doors and windows,” he finds his characters in the environment of their daily existence. The first shot captures the hero indoors, the second takes a close-up of some characteristic object, which often says more about its owner than its literal portrait. This formal approach distances Gordasevich from the immediacy of street photography and resembles the classics of conceptual portraiture: August Sander and his followers.
Andrey Gordasevich, “Dairon Colmines Saavedra, soccer fan” from the series “Havana: portraits on the road”, 2011 – 2012 Andrey Gordasevich, “Gemezio Laso Jorge, car mechanic” from the series “Havana: portraits on the road”, 2011 – 2012
The task of a museum curator is not only to monitor the security of the fund, but also to actively study the museum’s collection. Every day, MAMM curators work hard on the attribution of photographs: to clarify the location, date and plot of filming, and to place the work in an artistic and historical context, extensive research is often necessary. MAMM curator Larisa Zaitseva shared the results of her research. In a text-rich exhibition format, the curator talks about different ways of attributing photographs. For example, how to date a photograph based on a small detail (such as a small sign or newspaper in the hands of a passerby), what stories can be told through short inscriptions on the back of a photograph, and how to work with them. frames about which, apparently, nothing is known at all.
Unknown author, “Electric locomotive and steam locomotive at the Alexander Nevsky mine of the Lensky Gold Mining Partnership”, 1900s Unknown author, “The sheepdog as a naval “lookout” on the cruiser “Devonshire””, 1914-1918
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