Asia for taste and color: an unusual art project has been launched in Russia
Now there is a quiet and cozy gallery of modern art. And in the past, the rhythm of life was set by a factory horn. Under the very ceiling of the hall and now stretches a network of production pipes. But now they are colored and look like huge threads. And it also seems that they are tucked into the machine. In carpet or weaving? It all depends on the theme of the exhibition. Today, for example, there are entirely oriental patterns here.
The ArtHab Gallery, where all this can be seen, is located in the new creative quarter of the city of Ivanovo, which is being created right on the territory of the former textile manufactory. But now, thanks to the magic of the art exhibition "Our Asia", this corner partly resembles a noisy bazaar – with its colors and aromas, partly the quiet streets of ancient castle cities that stand on the Great Silk Road, partly the gardens of contemplation, in the midst of which "the waters of the ditch run as if alive."
Graffiti on carpets
In general, you can taste and color Asia in the gallery, which you will not find so often in Russia. So, at the opening of the exposition, not only spiritual, but also the most ordinary food was waiting for the guests. However, for these regions, pilaf of different varieties turned out to be very exotic.
Carpets also appeared in a completely different light at the exhibition. Yes, they habitually, as it was in almost every house in the Soviet years, hung on the walls. But now it was already the real wall graffiti. Not like the outside of buildings, where plaster becomes a canvas. In this case, paints from spray cans with aerosols lay on the soft pile of carpets. And the brushes applied paint on just such an amazing texture. And they did not "drown" in it, but gave birth to new images and meanings. Thus, a series of four portrait carpets was dedicated by the writer Kostya Layer from Nizhny Novgorod to women with Asian appearance - Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Uzbek and Uighur.
"There are carpets and images of beautiful Asian women here," the author, who was the focus of attention at the exhibition in Ivanovo, said briefly about his works. They stated that his canvases travel around cities and serve as decorations for music festivals. Kostya is a professional in wall painting, monumental painting and airbrushing. His favorite direction of creativity is visionary art. The master loves fluorescent works for the incredible volume and the sense of magic that both the audience and the author experience during the creation of paintings.
Georgy Makarov, a collagist from Kazakhstan, a member of the Union of Artists of Northern Cyprus and the Academy of Mondeal ART, who looks like tapestries, but in fact painted with acrylic rugs, attracted attention at the exhibition. The work "Ayla tun - moonlit night" and "Zhan tynyshtygy – Pacification" were created specifically for the Ivanovo project. The image of the guardian of the steppe is distinguished by hands folded as on Orthodox icons. A kind of transformation of Christian culture through Tengrianism and Islam. Another image is a stone woman, who was put in the steppe by nomads in honor of the spirits of their ancestors.
The author told the organizers of the exhibition that "he takes not the usual canvas or hardboard as a basis, but a natural cotton rug": "And I start writing on it with acrylic, with maximum preservation of the original pattern. I stopped at these carpets, as they very well convey the color of the autumn steppe, blooming grass, dried grass and blue earth."
Fragments of untreated wood for pendants were brought by the master from Turkey, where he collected them on the seashore. The crossbar is a handle from a shovel, also painted and processed.
In the footsteps of Asian Columbians
"There is a common phrase that the East is a delicate matter. He is very deep in his cultural tradition. He is multifaceted. The synthesis of cultures is simply colossal. I liked the very theme of this exhibition," admitted another participant Alisher Ibragimov. Most of his works are immersed in surrealism. With oriental colors and motifs. At the opening of the exhibition, with broad strokes, he created regular ornaments on a clean canvas.
From one of his works, by the way, the curator of the exhibition, Elizaveta Chuprikova-Krynskaya, looks at the audience. Her research interests are related to the cultural heritage of Central Asia. In particular, in the reading of the artist Nikolai Karazin, who worked at the turn of the XIX and XX centuries. The nature of Turkestan and Asian types are his favorite subject of his works.
"This is a contemporary of Vasily Vereshchagin. Two people who, like Columbus, like the two-faced Janus, opened the region not only for Russians, but also for Europeans," Tatiana Sergeeva, professor of the Surikov Moscow State Academic Art Institute, said at the opening of the exhibition. She is sure that the time has come to rediscover the art of the East.
Yulia Fedotova, a graduate of this prestigious university, provided the sculpture "Deep Waters" for the exhibition. In the center of the plot is a Tibetan baby monk. He lies on a wooden bridge and stretches out his hand to the fish, which seem to swim in the depths of our consciousness.
Europe and the East in the work of the Turkmen master
The bronze is enlivened by a twig of the real cattail, stuck in for the atmosphere. His fluff slowly flies away to pleasant oriental motifs, which also flow like water from a nearby easel-TV. It broadcasts a film with works that artists from different countries managed to send for the exhibition via the Internet. ORIENT also helped in this. The announcement of the exhibition attracted the attention of the Turkmen artist and sculptor Alexander Kashirsky and his works became the decoration of the exhibition.
Here is what the curator of the exhibition Elizaveta Chuprikova-Krynskaya said about them for the readers of our website:
"Our new view of Central Asia was formed by the works of authors from all countries of the region. It so happened that Turkmenistan and Tajikistan are represented by one artist each, and both of them are in our film, which performs not only educational, but also the function of musical drama.
Alexander Andreevich Kashirsky, a master from Ashgabat, sent more than ten digital works for Our Asia, very diverse in subject matter and purpose: examples of oil painting, photos of wooden reliefs and sculptures, bronze bas-reliefs. There is also one sample of computer graphics, "Mevlans".
As a curator, I was surprised by the literal clash of European and Oriental in the work of Alexander Kashirsky, which generally reflects the traditional academic approach and training of the artist. This was especially evident in the clear lines of the bas-reliefs: the author was inspired, on the one hand, by famous Turkmen personalities, such as opera singer Medeniyet Shahberdieva, children's poet Kayum Tangrykuliyev, composer Chary Nurimov - but also by Russian-French artist Zinaida Serebryakova, sculptor Sergei Konenkov, writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, Norwegian and English composers Edward Grieg and Eduard Elgar."
It is noteworthy that Alexander Andreevich has about fifty bronze personalities in total, so far no one else is working in this direction in Turkmenistan.
Crane Dance and Fraga's poems
Above the gadget-easel with works including by Alexander Kashirsky, there was a work with a pair of cranes by Arthur Bosenko from the city of Furmanov, Ivanovo region. The midnight dance of birds, revered in the East, captured by acrylic on canvas, showed one of the most amazing and beautiful moments in the life of not only this family of birds, but also the animal world as a whole.
During the opening of the exhibition, these cranes watched a poetic performance, during which the immortal lines of Magtymguly were also heard.
As a Turkmen, I was also impressed by the works of the Ivanovo artist Daria Sibireva dedicated to the Garagums and Issyk-Kul. She had not been to these parts herself, but she was surprisingly imbued with the spirit of these places.
"My husband is a traveler, traveled around Central Asia. She wrote works partly based on his stories, partly based on folk epics and music, of course. I watched photos and videos about the nature of Turkmenistan, so I tried to portray something similar in spirit," the artist told me.
Easy hypnosis of viewers and smartphones
Now I will not be able to forget the "Walnut", as well as the "Bukhara Deer" by Anna Rzayeva. These works will now become an image of my native places for me. And the invitation to a trip to Asia turned out to be a discreet, but such an impressive "Fresco" by Ekaterina Stutz.
Having closed his eyes and seemingly serene from that, Genghis Khan on the canvas of Viktor Ovichnikov, a favorite of the Lipetsk cultural public, almost instantly plunged into hypnosis not only me, but also my smartphone. He simply refuses to give a clear picture of the canvas, creating an exceptionally blurry background for the great conqueror. I tried to reshoot it several times, but the phone, it seems, was at this exhibition and it was at this painting that he lived exclusively his life.
Together with Rustam Kurbanov, I walked along the "Street of Bukhara". With Olga Monina, I remembered the legends and fairy tales of the East, as if I had flipped through the "Thousand and One Nights". And I also saw through the eyes of Alexey Dmitriev "The Flight of Nasreddin" and "Dreams of Khivaniye" by Eva Borkhovik. Our Asia is probably just like that. Beautiful and mysterious, open to those who look at the world with their hearts. After all, you can't see the most important thing with your eyes...
Leonid KIYASHKO, ORIENT special correspondent, Guild of Interethnic Journalism, Union of Journalists of Russia (Ivanovo)
