Three exhibits at PinchukArtCentre
The PinchukArtCentre is hosting two solo exhibits — by Sam Taylor-Wood, a British painter whose works were part of the Ukrainian exposition at the last Venice Biennale and are now on display for the first time in Eastern Europe, and by the young Japanese art photographer Keita Sugiura, as well as a group exhibit by young Russian contemporary artists entitled “21 Russia.”
Taylor-Wood’s works are an embodiment of the metaphor “capture the moment.” Often her works are extremely formal and look like freeze frames from video films, yet in reality, in terms of the principles of composition, chiaroscuro, and the use of local colors, they are closer to classical painting. This is true of “The Last Century,” a colorful photo of a group of pub patrons. Another work, “The Servant,” is a psychologically expressive photo of an elderly man lighting a cigarette on the threshold of his home. It is contrasted with “That White Rush,” a variation on the theme of Leda and Zeus in the guise of a swan.
Her new work, “3 Minute Round,” a double photo portrait of the Klitschko brothers before (or after) a bout is close to the Ukrainian viewer. An even greater degree of formalism is found in her Bram Stoke’s Chair III series, with a model suspended from an invisible rope over a chair which is miraculously balanced on one leg, with the girl casting a shadow while the chair casts none, like a vampire. “Sigh” is a video composition of an orchestra displayed on eight screens, with the musicians playing invisible instruments. You can hear the music, the musicians and the conductor are making the appropriate movements, but you see no instruments such as violins, violas, cellos, French horns, tubas, kettledrums, and so on. Apparently, despite the noticeable influence of the brilliant US video artist Bill Viola, who also dramatically slows down human existence on the screen, while achieving a truly metaphysical depth, Taylor-Wood currently ranks with Europe’s most distinguished video artists and art photographers and her exposition is, no doubt, a highlight of this exhibition season.
However, the visitors’ attention was mainly drawn by the “21 Russia” display. It consists of works created over the past eight years by artists from Moscow and other Russian cities: St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Samara, and Nizhniy Novgorod. Most of the art photographers are well-known contemporary artists: Viktor Alimpiyev, Pyotr Belyi, Dmitri Gutov, Vladimir Dubossarsky, Aleksandr Vinogradov, Konstantin Zvezdochetov, Aleksei Kallima, Yelena Kovylina, Valerii Koshliakov, Vladimir Logutov, Monro, Anatolii Osmolovsky, Pavel Pepperstein, Provmiza, Natalia Struchkova, David Ter-Oganjan, Aleksandra Galkina, Semyon Faibisovich, Yurii Shabelnikov, Sergei Shekhovtsov, and the groups AES+F, Blue Noses, and Blue Soup.
Most their works leave one depressed. The thing is not even the level of their talent (although, there are some clearly second-rate pieces), but the mood, the overall trend germane to these apparently different artists. What makes them depressive are endless uniforms, the brutal force of violence and equally brutal technocracy, militaristic themes, and the imperial style. Even if there is a touch of irony, it is rendered with the gracefulness of an armadillo. Indeed, theirs is an unequivocal message.
AES+F’s computerized film “Last Riot – 2” was displayed in Russia’s pavilion during last year’s Biennale in Venice. This video is packed with militaristic images. Pictures of oil derricks and materiel are interspersed with scenes showing children fighting and torturing each other with various weapons. This time there is also a sculptural composition of teenage murderers.
The former radical Anatolii Osmolovsky’s “creations” are bronze models of turrets of various models of tanks.
The Blue Soup specializes in logistics, with endless trainloads of front line supplies and standard boxes being dropped by cargo planes.
Vladimir Dubossarsky and Aleksandr Vinogradov are rather fashionable. Their “inspiration” is a spetsnaz bloodbath, with homebred Rambos blasting away and tearing to pieces either the invisible enemy or themselves.
“Scale 50/1” by David Ter-Oganjan and Aleksandra Galkina consists of graphic copies of a monitor screen with scenes of the same fights plus video with someone hastily sketching a house and then setting it on fire, then drawing a car, dotting it with bullet dents, and adding the caption “Lenin.”
Yelena Kovylina in her “Waltz” (documentary of a performance) downs one of vodka after another to the accompaniment of waltzes and songs popular in the 1930s-1940s. Each time she pins a new military decoration on her tunic and invites yet another man for a dance, even though she is no longer steady on her feet. A soundtrack with cannonade would make the effect complete.
There is a better touch of humor to Dmitri Gutov’s “Thaw”: a romance by Shostakovich to lyrics borrowed from the [Soviet comic] magazine Krokodil (Crocodile) about a man who will never report a hooligan to the militia after being mugged by him and an another man who keeps slipping and falling into puddles. This objet d’art is indicative of the artist’s rather straightforward idea: you are mugged during a thaw and the perpetrator will get away with it. Does this mean that when the temperature drops well below zero the militia will protect you?
Yurii Shabelnikov submitted three black pictures with lathes and the inscription “Glory to Labor!” along with a [five-pointed] star on the floor, filled with cigarette butts.
Aleksei Kallima created a large picture with a scene from a soccer match, done in invisible ink, so you can see it only in ultraviolet light. Well, just another normal work of pop art, except the caption: “Terek vs. Chelsea.”
And the Russian display’s top hit: Sergei Shekhovtsev’s installation “The Throne” showing a huge white throne with a double-headed eagle and security cameras above, along with an arrow-shaped highlight. This is not just a symbol of today’s Russia but also practically an accessory of power.
These are the most representative works from the “21 Russia” collection, and I will repeat myself: there isn’t a touch of irony or criticism to them. In fact, artists who do not take part in this chauvinistic orgy appear more interesting. Konstantin Zvezdochetov, co-founder of the legendary group Mukhomor (Toadstool), submitted a truly funny cartoon illustrating Moscow street life, entitled “Tifosi and Paparazzi.” However, contrasting these works with the way he and his Toadstool friends lashed out at the Soviet system in far more adverse conditions, you feel sorry for them.
The art duet Blue Noses has a real talent for provocative burlesque: “ Kissing Militiamen (The Era of Mercy),” with two Russian policemen necking against the background of a birch forest, is a slap in the face of the contemporary Russian public taste. The installation “Small Men” is both funny and frightening. A row of pasteboard boxes with the bottoms serving as screens showing tiny men and women who live their own absurd lives, fooling around, eating, making love, throwing each other down the slit abyss, and running away from a toy crocodile. Only one of them, Lenin, is dressed. He is eternally alive and is just sleeping, turning from side to side. These petty human beings hustling and bustling like ants under the magnifying glass present a horrifying metaphor: no classical empathy with the man in the street left.
Valerii Koshliakov (Moscow) and his Sarcophagus project deserve special notice. Koshliakov does not fool around with ideologies. He works with pasteboard, creating vague impressions of various epochs. This time he submitted evidence of one of the greatest catastrophes in recent—primarily Ukrainian—history. His pasteboard models portray the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, with a huge rusty railroad timetable, considering that no trains will ever head this way, an old abandoned tractor, an abnormally big mailbox, a ruined movie theater, and blurry brownish white and gray landscapes on large sheets. All of these handmade pasteboard items make the memories of that disaster even more painful.
You can endlessly dwell on estrangement, visual language specifics, discources, and paradigms, but the fact remains: “21 Russia” is not a review of certain trends but largely a sad diagnosis of life in present-day Russia. In contrast with the dry aesthetic approaches of Taylor-Wood and Keita Sugiura, this emerges as a rather voluminous metaphor reflecting the state of affairs not only in the arts, but also in the current social and political daily life. From this point of view the new PinchukArtCentre project can hardly be overestimated.
