I am ready for a long road flight for work with a week- or months-long projects.
French Park
"The nature of things reveals itself better in artificial constraint than in natural freedom," wrote Francis Bacon.
In this project, nature becomes a theater, where plants and park inhabitants perform a performance in the spirit of "country baroque."
Trees, arranged with the mathematical precision of French gardens, enter into a dialogue with the naturalness of animals, dirt, eggs, and other unexpected elements.
Country baroque is a form of tolerance, where rational order coexists with the chaotic nature. This union is paradoxical and unreal, but therein lies its charm.
The setting is the Great Hall of the Stables Building on Yelagin Island, where viewers are invited to stroll through the "park," but strictly within the designated areas.
In this project, nature becomes a theater, where plants and park inhabitants perform a performance in the spirit of "country baroque."
Trees, arranged with the mathematical precision of French gardens, enter into a dialogue with the naturalness of animals, dirt, eggs, and other unexpected elements.
Country baroque is a form of tolerance, where rational order coexists with the chaotic nature. This union is paradoxical and unreal, but therein lies its charm.
The setting is the Great Hall of the Stables Building on Yelagin Island, where viewers are invited to stroll through the "park," but strictly within the designated areas.
Exhibition with a promenade
Setting:
Great Hall of the Stables Building of the Palace and Park Ensemble on Elagin Island
Time:
Spring-summer
The performance runs from May 25 to June 25, with intermissions on Mondays.
Characters:
Anton Aleksandrovich Leukhin — member of the Union of Artists, painter
Nadiya Rashitovna Miniakhmetova — member of the Union of Artists, ceramist
Maria Nikolaevna Usova — member of the Union of Artists, graphic artist, and glazier
Yulia Nikolaevna Klopova — member of the Union of Artists, ceramist
Tatyana Gennadyevna Tsareva — associate professor, graphic artist, and glazier
"The mixture of European sophistication with semi-Oriental barbarism creates that unique fusion, that masquerade, which so amazed foreigners in its time and which now appeals so much to us, who love everything exotic and strange."
The exhibition’s artistic concept revolves around playing with clichéd images and stereotypes that have formed in the popular consciousness about the Baroque and Rococo eras.
Turning to the aesthetics of those historical periods, the authors reinterpret them with the humor and irony characteristic of postmodernism.
This exhibition is a collective metaphorical image of a "royal court on a visit to the countryside," when one simultaneously wants to stroll through the fields and yet still have to "keep a straight face."
The contrast between high and low, the deliberately artificial and the pristinely natural, creates an incredible inner tension, akin to the feeling of Caravaggio’s still lifes—"the peak of sensuality on the verge of withering." This exhibition exudes abundance bordering on excess.
But the artists have a keen sense of taste and do not overstep it; the exhibition leaves one with a sense of delight in the concept and its execution, the intensity of emotion and the mastery of execution. Painting, glass, graphics, and ceramics—such diverse art forms are intertwined into a single, indivisible "performance of things."
Each artist’s work is a standalone work of art, but together they create a dramaturgy of space with which the viewer is invited to interact. The artists have overcome the lack of contact inherent in many museum exhibitions.
Visitors are free to choose their own route: should they first visit Maria Nikolaevna’s "Aromatniki" (Fragrances), stroll through Yulia Nikolaevna’s "French Park," or perhaps explore Tatyana Gennadyevna’s "Frames"? Thus, visitors to the exhibition direct their own version of the presented "theater of things" and become its full-fledged participant, its co-author. A new viewer will arrive, and the performance will be performed in a new way.
Great Hall of the Stables Building of the Palace and Park Ensemble on Elagin Island
Time:
Spring-summer
The performance runs from May 25 to June 25, with intermissions on Mondays.
Characters:
Anton Aleksandrovich Leukhin — member of the Union of Artists, painter
Nadiya Rashitovna Miniakhmetova — member of the Union of Artists, ceramist
Maria Nikolaevna Usova — member of the Union of Artists, graphic artist, and glazier
Yulia Nikolaevna Klopova — member of the Union of Artists, ceramist
Tatyana Gennadyevna Tsareva — associate professor, graphic artist, and glazier
"The mixture of European sophistication with semi-Oriental barbarism creates that unique fusion, that masquerade, which so amazed foreigners in its time and which now appeals so much to us, who love everything exotic and strange."
Baron N. N. Wrangel
On "Folk Rococo"
The exhibition’s artistic concept revolves around playing with clichéd images and stereotypes that have formed in the popular consciousness about the Baroque and Rococo eras.
Turning to the aesthetics of those historical periods, the authors reinterpret them with the humor and irony characteristic of postmodernism.
This exhibition is a collective metaphorical image of a "royal court on a visit to the countryside," when one simultaneously wants to stroll through the fields and yet still have to "keep a straight face."
The contrast between high and low, the deliberately artificial and the pristinely natural, creates an incredible inner tension, akin to the feeling of Caravaggio’s still lifes—"the peak of sensuality on the verge of withering." This exhibition exudes abundance bordering on excess.
But the artists have a keen sense of taste and do not overstep it; the exhibition leaves one with a sense of delight in the concept and its execution, the intensity of emotion and the mastery of execution. Painting, glass, graphics, and ceramics—such diverse art forms are intertwined into a single, indivisible "performance of things."
Each artist’s work is a standalone work of art, but together they create a dramaturgy of space with which the viewer is invited to interact. The artists have overcome the lack of contact inherent in many museum exhibitions.
Visitors are free to choose their own route: should they first visit Maria Nikolaevna’s "Aromatniki" (Fragrances), stroll through Yulia Nikolaevna’s "French Park," or perhaps explore Tatyana Gennadyevna’s "Frames"? Thus, visitors to the exhibition direct their own version of the presented "theater of things" and become its full-fledged participant, its co-author. A new viewer will arrive, and the performance will be performed in a new way.
