26 march – 11 may
From 26 March to 11 May 2024, the All-Russian Decorative Art Museum is hosting an anniversary project by curator Tatiana Paleyeva dedicated to the 25th anniversary of East Meets West Gallery.
The theme chosen for the project, "Living and Dead. Ecological Fantasy" correlates with one of the most complex philosophical questions of life and death, in which Life, strictly speaking, is not opposed to Death.
The second main theme of the project is the relationship between Man and Nature, a theme that brings man face to face with the problems of environmental protection and the very survival of man on our planet. The cataclysms of recent years on earth, both natural, climatic and social, convince us of the perfect relevance of art's new address to the relationship between man and nature.
The conflict between two parallel realities - the reality of the natural environment and the man-made environment - is now being brought to the forefront of humanity's life, and it solely depends on humanity whether it will survive on Earth or be forced to look for another planet to continue living. The Earth, in the works of contemporary Russian artists, photographers and sculptors, plays a symbolic role of a humanistic, unifying element in the era of contradictions and discord in national and international state relations.
Creativity as creation, as an embodiment of light, truth, goodness and beauty dominated the scene of European art practically until the beginning of the XXth century. Something broke in this favourable picture of the world, especially during the period of vivid social protests in Europe and Russia in the early XXth century and during the First World War. Creativity echoes these cataclysms, echoing the paradigm shift in the treatises of Western philosophers and thinkers who were the first to grasp these trends (Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and further in our time to Georges Bataille). Nowadays creativity and especially criticism are drawn by a struggle between two principles: creativity as life, beauty, light, goodness and creativity as destruction, death.
The project is built as a complex labyrinth, which you have to pass along a given trajectory of movement in order to plunge successively into the waters of good and evil, light and darkness, life and death of nature, spiritual immortality and frailty of existence, Heaven and Hell, sky and cosmos. Music will serve as a guiding star for you on this journey.
The exposition is divided into sections, each in a corresponding hall. The beginning is composed of the works of the art-pedagogues and older generation creators who live on in their students and continue to influence the development of art even today. This is the "Continuity and Renaissance" room. I am very lucky to present the works of the unrivalled draughtsman and art-pedagogue Dmitry Dmitrievich Zhilinsky, and next to him his equally talented and unique pupil Natalia Nesterova. In the catalogue for Dmitrievich Zhilinsky’s posthumous solo exhibition she wrote: "We, his students, have taken different paths, each of us in our own way, but we never forget what he put in us - love and service to art”.
Proceeding from these teachers and their inspiring examples art flows onto "Life Alive and Constructive", section and the section of "Earth Vibrations", which culminate in the spiritual rebirth of man, taking him up to heavens in the hall "Alive. Heaven." The halls "Inanimate" and "Life-Death" can be associated with the forces of degradation, darkness, destruction and death.
We would like to believe that the opposition between the living and the inanimate, the sensible and the senseless, and the cruel, which was vividly traced in the works of artists of the older generations of the second half of the XXth century, will not become a radical diagnosis for all new generations of plastic artists.
Let Tatiana Badanina's "Wings" give the viewer a dream of the "promised land", of the boundless and kind world that awaits each of us around the corner.
The project involves: Dmitry Zhilinsky, Natalia Nesterova, Aladdin Garunov, Alexander Yulikov, Alexander Oligerov, Alexander Sitnikov, Alena Telpukhovskaya, Anatoly Komelin, Anatoly Purlik, Andrey Dillendorf, Vasily Vlasov, Viktor Reshetnikov, Viktor Korneev, Vladimir Nasedkin, Vladimir Migachev, Gennady Troshkov, Dmitry Trubin, Ekaterina Kudryavtseva, Elena Belyakova, Irina Starzhenetskaya, Karina Nazarova, Mikhail Dronov, Natalia Tsvetkova, Natalia Sitnikova, Olga Bulgakova, Olga Khan, Svetlana Izgiyeva, Sergey Antonov, Sergey Brukhanov, Sergey Nikeshkin, Suren Ayvazyan, Tatiana Badanina, Tatiana Hengstler, Tatiana Yan, Yulia Malinina.
Project curator Tatiana Paleyeva.
The second main theme of the project is the relationship between Man and Nature, a theme that brings man face to face with the problems of environmental protection and the very survival of man on our planet. The cataclysms of recent years on earth, both natural, climatic and social, convince us of the perfect relevance of art's new address to the relationship between man and nature.
The conflict between two parallel realities - the reality of the natural environment and the man-made environment - is now being brought to the forefront of humanity's life, and it solely depends on humanity whether it will survive on Earth or be forced to look for another planet to continue living. The Earth, in the works of contemporary Russian artists, photographers and sculptors, plays a symbolic role of a humanistic, unifying element in the era of contradictions and discord in national and international state relations.
Creativity as creation, as an embodiment of light, truth, goodness and beauty dominated the scene of European art practically until the beginning of the XXth century. Something broke in this favourable picture of the world, especially during the period of vivid social protests in Europe and Russia in the early XXth century and during the First World War. Creativity echoes these cataclysms, echoing the paradigm shift in the treatises of Western philosophers and thinkers who were the first to grasp these trends (Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, and further in our time to Georges Bataille). Nowadays creativity and especially criticism are drawn by a struggle between two principles: creativity as life, beauty, light, goodness and creativity as destruction, death.
The project is built as a complex labyrinth, which you have to pass along a given trajectory of movement in order to plunge successively into the waters of good and evil, light and darkness, life and death of nature, spiritual immortality and frailty of existence, Heaven and Hell, sky and cosmos. Music will serve as a guiding star for you on this journey.
The exposition is divided into sections, each in a corresponding hall. The beginning is composed of the works of the art-pedagogues and older generation creators who live on in their students and continue to influence the development of art even today. This is the "Continuity and Renaissance" room. I am very lucky to present the works of the unrivalled draughtsman and art-pedagogue Dmitry Dmitrievich Zhilinsky, and next to him his equally talented and unique pupil Natalia Nesterova. In the catalogue for Dmitrievich Zhilinsky’s posthumous solo exhibition she wrote: "We, his students, have taken different paths, each of us in our own way, but we never forget what he put in us - love and service to art”.
Proceeding from these teachers and their inspiring examples art flows onto "Life Alive and Constructive", section and the section of "Earth Vibrations", which culminate in the spiritual rebirth of man, taking him up to heavens in the hall "Alive. Heaven." The halls "Inanimate" and "Life-Death" can be associated with the forces of degradation, darkness, destruction and death.
We would like to believe that the opposition between the living and the inanimate, the sensible and the senseless, and the cruel, which was vividly traced in the works of artists of the older generations of the second half of the XXth century, will not become a radical diagnosis for all new generations of plastic artists.
Let Tatiana Badanina's "Wings" give the viewer a dream of the "promised land", of the boundless and kind world that awaits each of us around the corner.
The project involves: Dmitry Zhilinsky, Natalia Nesterova, Aladdin Garunov, Alexander Yulikov, Alexander Oligerov, Alexander Sitnikov, Alena Telpukhovskaya, Anatoly Komelin, Anatoly Purlik, Andrey Dillendorf, Vasily Vlasov, Viktor Reshetnikov, Viktor Korneev, Vladimir Nasedkin, Vladimir Migachev, Gennady Troshkov, Dmitry Trubin, Ekaterina Kudryavtseva, Elena Belyakova, Irina Starzhenetskaya, Karina Nazarova, Mikhail Dronov, Natalia Tsvetkova, Natalia Sitnikova, Olga Bulgakova, Olga Khan, Svetlana Izgiyeva, Sergey Antonov, Sergey Brukhanov, Sergey Nikeshkin, Suren Ayvazyan, Tatiana Badanina, Tatiana Hengstler, Tatiana Yan, Yulia Malinina.
Project curator Tatiana Paleyeva.