Parallels

East Meets West Gallery
“Parallels” by Tatyana Nazarenko and her students
East Meets West Gallery curator Tatiana Paleeva is proud to present “Parallels”, an exhibit combining the paintings of Tatyana Nazarenko with those of her students. Tatyana is a People’s Artist of the Russian Federation, a full member of the Russian Academy of Arts, a professor and head of studio at the Moscow State Academic Art Institute. Her students are Julia Malinina, Veronika Nazarova, Anastasia Omelchenko, Christina Strunkova and Anastasia Dashevskaya.
The tradition of showing an artist’s work together with his students derives from ancient times and was once a classical practice at Russian museums and exhibitions. But the attitude of neglect towards tradition in recent years has left references to the ideas, skills and experience of a teacher almost forgotten.
The thematic, genre and stylistic “parallels” in the exhibit are metaphors for the entire range of interpersonal relations, from mutual love, respect and admiration to misunderstanding, debate and struggle. These include love and gender relations in the works by Tatyana Nazarenko and Anastasia Omelchenko; a symbolic representation of life and childhood in the form of a house in Veronica Nazarova’s pieces; human existence in an aggressive urban space by Christina Strunkova and Julia Malinina. Anastasia Omelchenko’s series “Egypt” offers scenic adventure as an opportunity to escape from “colorless, artless” everyday life to colorful and exotic world of Africa, while Anastasia Dashevskaya is more interested in the way of life and ethnic clothing of indigenous peoples of Kamchatka.
Tatyana Nazarenko’s works “Autumn”, “Farewell”, “Salome” and “Silent Night” are formally genre paintings, but are not really focused on the details of interior design or the visual characteristics of a man or woman; rather, they look deep inside the heroine, an artist who feels her complete solitude even with her loved one. The interior details, compressed by Nazarenko to a piece of a bed or sofa with part of a wall behind, do not pull the partners together but on the contrary tear them further apart. The artist turns them away from each other, never looking each other in the eye, which in the end leads her heroine to the final tragedy similar to Salome’s fate.
Form, style and texture play important roles in Veronika Nazarova’s series “House”. Her house is a childishly naive, iconic picture of growing up from a “small” to a “big” world, such as in her works “Pink House” or “Construction”. Its general symbolism “House = Life” is a clear conceptual equality for the artist. Veronica experiments a lot with different natural pigments of the Ferapontov monastery, and combining them with modern acrylic or tempera she achieves a texture similar to those found in ancient church and monastery paintings.
“An interesting aspect of the series ‘Transfiguration Graffiti’ by Julia Malinina is that she recognizes the territory of a canvas not as a plane, but as an urban space occupied by our sedentary and nomadic pasts that fight or speak on the painting. The result of this interaction is always dynamic and shifting; the territory of the canvas can pass from hand to hand, from ideology to capture, from beauty of hooliganism. During the process of revelation the artist has made a series of works that can be extended with different versions, where victory may shift sides according to alternative histories of painting.” (B. Klyushnikov)
Anastasia Omelchenko’s series of works “Farewell”, “Egypt” and “Bosnia” are all connected to travel in one way or another. However, despite this being a rather trendy theme, her works are not supported by decorative styles or fashionable presentation, such as excessively exotic oriental architecture or ornamental elements of ethnic cultures. On the contrary, the roots of the artist’s Russian school are plainly visible in the philosophical and concise images of distant lands. Anastasia draws the series “Farewell” in a softer European manner, where bright red not only becomes the unifying color of the various works but also serves as a symbol of the joyous state of love, in spite of the sorrow of parting.
Anastasia Dashevskaya‘s ethnic canvas “Kamchatka” has a monumental and epic character. Its diversity is reflected in the various scenes covering both traditional and contemporary ways of life of the Koryaks, the indigenous people of Kamchatka. For the artist the important thing is not the details but rather the broad view of contemporary Koryak life. At the same time Anastasia places a full size portrait of a Koryak girl in the center of a composition and carefully scrutinizes her national costume, pose and the ornaments of this indigenous people.
Christina Strunkova deals with the contradiction between the wild and civilized parts of a city space where a person tries to “find at least a cell, a small fraction for existence.” In her composition, inherited from the constructivist era, the human figure becomes invisible and unimportant; the giant patterns of the surrounding environment wrap and trap him completely in their network. “In this system the composite beams are painted in symbolic red, the color of danger and aggression …. The color scheme chosen by the artist is contrasting and abstract: clear colors and artificially bright light enhance the effect of separation from the natural, pristine world. The main achievement of this work is an ideal combination of symbolic, formal and artistic aspects within the same universe.” (B. Klyushnikov)
We are pleased to invite you to “Parallels” with Tatyana Nazarenko and her students at the Design Center ARTPLAY from October 28 to November 30, 2014
Every day from 12:00 to 22:00. Admission is free.
Design Center ARTPLAY
Syromiatnicheskaya St. 10, Building 3, 2nd Floor
Tel .: 8 (495) 620 08 83
www.artplay.ru