It is a cluttered vision, at the same time ironic, nostalgic and disillusioned, torn between past and present, sordid reality and magnified ideal, Eternal Russia and Soviet Empire, that contemporary Russian artists project in their works. They say: the loss which is not simply that of memory, the bankruptcy of ideologies which is not only that of the Communist, the illusion and illusion of images, the chasms in which religion or history and still more the religion of history precipitates us, the impossibility of the dream and the certainty of the nightmare.
Recovering like so many tinsel the signs of what was the expression of Russian, Tsarist or Soviet greatness, accumulating references that often overlap, sometimes contradictory, mixing them with those of a contrary modernity - emanating from a West which today aspires them - these artists paint, sculpt, photograph, film or knit the grotesque images of a dilapidated world, with an outrageous earthiness, deliberately rustic, energetically popular. For the expression of an unvarnished reality always appears unseemly and vulgar alongside that of ideals. But it is also tinged with a marvelous naive, a baroque mysticism, sometimes a Chekhovian romanticism - of which we know the cynical harshness, behind the sweetness of the images and the elegance of the feelings - which push the limits of the imaginary, and which would be, sublime enjoyment, the parodic and desperate expression of the Slavic soul.
Vernissage
13. March2010
Exhibition period
14. March – 13. June 2010
Venue
Abbaye St André - Centre d'art contemporain Meymac
2-8 Rue du Bûcher
19250 Meymac
France
Contact media: Céline Haudrechy
E-Mail: celine.haudrechy@cacmeymac.fr
www.cacmeymac.fr
Artists
Yuri Avvakumov | Born 1957 in Tiraspol, USSR
Katerina Belkina | Born 1974 in Samara, USSR
Alina & Jeff Bliumis | Born in USSR
Anastasia Bolchakova | Born 1980 in Moscow, USSR
Leonid Borisov | Born 1943 in Leningrad, USSR
Kirill Chelushkin | Born 1968 in Abramtsevo, USSR
Dubossarsky & Vinogradov | Born 1964 in Moscow, USSR
Alexei Kallima | Born 1969 in Grosny, USSR
Valery Koshlyakov | Born 1962 in Salks, USSR
Oleg Kulik | Born 1961 in Kiev, USSR
Vladimir Logutov | Born 1980 in Samara, USSR
Igor Makarevich | Born 1943 in Trialety, USSR
Sergey Maximishin | Born 1964 in Kodyma, USSR
Alexandra Mitlianskaya | Born 1958 in Moscow, USSR
Andrei Molodkin | Born 1966 in Boui, USSR
Vladimir Nasedkin | Born 1954 in Ivdel, USSR
Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich | Born 1978 in Moscow, USSR
