THE ART NEWSPAPER

The 8th annual Cosmoscow contemporary art fair has commenced

The JART Gallery stand has been declared winner of contemporary art fair Cosmoscow 2020, now in its 8th year. It was chosen by a special jury, featuring Leonid Bazhanov, curator and academician at the Russian Academy of Fine Arts, Ekaterina Lazareva, curator of Garage Contemporary Art Museum, and Maria Lind, Counsellor for Cultural Affairs at the Swedish Embassy in Moscow.

The stand was a preview of another exhibition, “Cha Shcha”. Exhibition in the woods”, curated by Andrey Erofeev, which explores the phenomenon of the forest in modern culture. JART’s Cosmoscow stand served to stimulate public interest in the exhibition, but also to highlight the fragility of masterpieces, doomed to decay amid nature.

Original news here

ITAR-TASS

CHA SHCHA. Exhibition in the woods.

JART Gallery presents a grand land-art project, exploring the forest as a crucial cultural entity in the context of an uncertain 2020. Among the 42 works by 28 artists, numerous site-specific objects will be shown - most by leading Russian nationals. Categories include “Shelters and hideouts”, “Places of seclusion”, “Covert life”, “Forest context” and “Monuments to the past”.

Julia Nesis’ “Labyrinth” concerns itself with finding one’s own way, centring on a tower at the heart of the piece that visitors can climb, before looking back down upon the path they chose.

The artist’s other masterpiece is “Path of Heroes”, a scattering of what appear to be giant eggs: some intact, some already hatched. “I wanted to convey the internal essence of human beings: we all are heroes, although some people can’t leave their shells, while others have emerged, but are yet to realise who they are.”

Path of Heroes, Julia Nesis

Original news here

NEWS OF CULTURE. Culture TV channel Yulia Kurdyukova

(Starts at 21 min)

Andrey Erofeev, curator: “We are familiar with the term Gesamtkunstwerk: art created from diverse strands. So, here, all works are site-specific, and subordinate to the exhibition as a whole. The main objective is to free contemporary art from the restraints of curators, observers and beady-eyed gallery attendants; to let the exhibits breathe in the open, unconstrained by museum walls. “Labyrinth” by Julia Nesis is a perfect example of nature overriding human actions.

Metal-grid walls, already consumed by rust, offer near-clear transparency. As the author has it, the idea was for these installations to settle permanently into their surrounds, becoming part of the scenery on the one hand, a contemplative spot for visitors on the other.

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KOMMERSANT NEWSPAPER

"Cha Shcha” exhibition

“Cha Shcha” exhibition The concept of shelter was the leitmotif of the exhibition: parks and pavilions re-imagined, paying homage to hermitages and mazes such as one encounters in Italian gardens. They address the pandemic we are struggling with – less a philosophical, more an epidemiological quest for solitude.

Presented by The MishMash group, ‘The Scale of Safe Distances’ is a forest of red rods evocative of Walter De Maria’s 1977 land art work ‘Lightning Field’. But the rods in this new incarnation aren’t a nod to that classic in New Mexico. Here they exist to enforce the 1.5m social-distancing rule.

The second MishMash installation, a blend of Gothic places of worship and mazes made using fences salvaged from cemeteries, evokes the melancholic reflection experienced wandering landscaped parks.

Assembled from old bus doors, “Alexander’s Summer Shower” is probably the best-known creation among Vladimir Arkhipov’s collection. It suggests an ascetic’s asylum from the menace of COVID; “Forest furniture”, by Pavel Pepperstein, is a tableau, in a thicket, of bookcases and an armchair beneath a gigantic white-spotted, red-toadstool umbrella from a Soviet-era children’s playground: any hermit could spend lockdown here happily absorbed.

We find Kirill Ass’ “Marsyas” taking refuge in one of those wooden constructs used to shelter marble garden sculptures during winter. Alexander Brodsky barriers his piece, “Weaving”, with a blank fence - in less troubled times this installation would be absurd enough to heap criticism upon itself. Right now, as we seek to retreat, it offers a very practical use.

Even Valery Koshlyakov’s “Iconos”, a melding of icon-shrine and village outhouse, suggests an island of salvation, not to be outshone by Francisco Infante/Nonna Goryunova’s “Vertical-Horizontal”, a vulcanised, woven web.

The only promise of post-epidemic renewal lies with Julia Nesis’ “Path of Heroes”, in which we survey what appear to be the shells of eggs recently hatched, delivering into the world mysterious creatures. Creativity is stifled by criticism, by museums and galleries, which rein in artistic freedom to their own ends, mindful of political correctness and self-censorship. Is it any wonder, then, that artists, when able to escape institutions for the fresh freedom of the forest, discover liberty they never felt in the dungeon of a cubic white gallery?

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EXHIBITION IN FOREST OUTSIDE MOSCOW ENCHANTS RUSSIAN ART WORLD

“Form of soft protest” is likened to the optimism of the early 2000s

05/10/2020 SOPHIA KISHKOVSKY

A site-specific land art exhibition staged in a forest outside Moscow has struck a nerve in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic and political crackdown. Cha Shcha, a play on the Russian word for “thicket”, opened on the grounds of Pirogovo, a resort and housing complex in a forested area outside the Russian capital on 20 September (until 20 October). It is drawing rave reviews from the city’s usually cynical art community, which is still reeling from lockdown. Nearly 30 artists ranging from Soviet-era giants such as Francisco Infante-Arana and Nonna Goryunova, to contemporary artists such as Pavel Pepperstein, and Pavel Otdelnov, created installations that are scattered throughout the woods. The exhibition also resulted in a new art group called Artistic Solitude. A YouTube video with dramatic drone footage offers a tour of the site and works.

Alexander Korytov, the director of Jart Gallery, who organised the exhibition, said it was conceived before the lockdown, but planned during the time of strictest anti-coronavirus measures. Self-isolation and the forest played into the “idea of asceticism” that is reflected in works such as Valery Koshlyakov’s cave-like Ikonos, which draws on the reverse perspective and “mythical architecture” of Russian icons and the avant-garde. Koshlyakov guided the construction of Ikonos via Zoom, as he was in France at the time. The builders had experience working with museums and some are artists as well. Pepperstein’s project includes a watercolour that serves as the exhibition’s logo and an installation called Furniture in the Forest, which consists of a library of bookcases in the midst of a thicket, with an armchair for reading under a 3m-tall mushroom.

Original news here

ART NEWSPAPER RUSSIA

“Retreat to the forest is an escape from ‘un-freedom’ and coercion.” Renowned curator Andrey Erofeev discusses the natural-artistic whole, the emerging of new art and the connection with art festivals previously held on the shores of the Pirogovo reservoir at the JART Gallery’s new project ‘Cha Shcha’ (Thicket), opening at Pirogovo resort”

Interview by Milena Orlova

Your exhibition, “Cha Shcha” (Thicket), presents wtorks by 28 creatives (including such big names as Francisco Infante, Irina Korina, Valery Koshlyakov and Pavel Pepperstein) and occupies a space celebrated for art. The “Art Klyazma festival” was held here at the beginning of the new millennium. Do you sense a connection?

It follows in the wake of several events, chiefly the colossal festival Archstoyanie. Also “Melioration” and “Art Klyazma”, both of which I attended. They were extraordinary – much larger than our project. Interestingly we feature several artists who participated in them, including Andrey Kuzkin and Iliya Voznesensky, both members of “Obledenenie achitectorov” group («Icing architects group»)

We have a long tradition of out-of-town events showcasing the talents of, for example, Dvizhenie and Francisco Infante, the installations of Nonna Goryunova and performances by Collective Actions among others.

You call your exhibition an experiment. What is so experimental about it?

It’s a park, not an exhibition: a kind-of natural-artistic whole, in which each component is as important as the overarching theme. That’s why, for example, we don’t have any labels. It’s not elitism on our part - there are simply no labels in the park. You have to absorb, feel each exhibit as a temple of some kind, places to rest and reflect. They’re meant to re-focus your thinking, your vision – just exactly who created them remains obscured. The idea was to showcase works in wild - not managed urban - woodland, and we found the happy medium here: cultivated private forest

You were unable to exhibit the works in wild forests, weren’t you?

Yes, but we realised that nature proliferated, helping the pavilions to be isolated statements. “Labyrinth”, created by Julia Nesis, for instance, is a typical park pavilion, based on a historical plan. It’s the same story with “Alexander’s Summer Shower” by Vladimir Arkhipov and “Laundry Room” by group AS (Artistic Seclusion). These are classical park arbours in which to sit and ruminate, or find shelter from the rain.

You mention Gilles Clement, a contemporary French landscape designer, Professor at L'École Nationale Supérieure de Paysage de Versailles, who promotes, shall we say, wild parks. We have similar things in Moscow: flower beds full of weeds that turn out to be a designer’s brainchild.

While, obviously, some people cling to history and heritage, there’s a prominent landscape school at Versailles that doesn’t teach according to the principles of Andre Lenôtre, 17th-Century garden designer to the French monarchs. Quite the opposite. The Third Landscape means the landscape of the Third Estate (that of the bourgeoisie and peasants). It’s neither a basic vegetable plot nor an aristocratic park, but a product of nature, catering for everyone, untamed by designers, left untouched in all its time-honoured biodiversity. As Gilles Clement points out, this kind of landscape restores itself in all kinds of places (dead zones around highways and railway tracks, for example). He started making parks in Paris with this method. He created an astonishing one near La Défense! It was funded by the city and the officials were shocked when he introduced rusty rails, planting dry bush and weeds - hogweed, nettle, other invasive species…

Is the forest for you in some way an opportunity to escape from ugly reality?

Oh yeah, escape from coercion, from un-freedom, certainly from artistic un-freedom. It’s a widely recognised metaphor: a retreat to the forest is a retreat to beauty and horror simultaneously. It’s a transition to some kind of alternative life, dangerous and yet gratifying for the freedom it delivers.

It is deeply interwoven with the desire to not build a future utopia, rather to foster one in contemporary natural habits - with different conditions. It is a common metaphor and yet I do see something concrete in it: how can new art emerge in micro-communities who, I think, left mainstream narratives, went AWOL and hid away in “dachas” (Russian country houses). Think of, say, Irina Korina, who went off and seems to be doing other stuff.

Is this somehow connected with the pandemic and lockdown?

No, I think the two just coincided. This is the pressure of what I’d call maintaining “a personal style”. Quite a recognisable style, which an artist is expected – forced even – to produce but which they’ve somehow grown exhausted of. I’m talking mainly pictures, because they are the most actively bought. We are on the premises of an isolated resort, the site of a popular public sanatorium in Soviet times. Of course, it’s controversial: the exhibition proclaims freedom but it’s behind a fence. In fact, it proclaims the freedom of private life, concealed from strangers’ eyes.

We did discussing getting rid of the fence, of making the space accessible from the word go, but for various reasons it came to nothing. The projects pay homage to proximity – the cult of the fence. The “MishMash” duo project, for example, towers like a gothic temple assembled from graveyard fences. What is it with humanity? Why do so many people, once they forsake urbanity, build a fence, keeping nature at arm’s length, out of sight? It’s inked to the rise of private property in Russia. A fence is a symbol of it; of life concealed from society. It’s not just a fence, it’s a measure of aesthetic worth that can be exhibited in its own right. The artist Aleksandr Brodsky states as much with his installation “100м2”. All we can see is a tall fence. What’s inside remains unknown – and valuable. And let’s not forget that French architect who suggested creating parks no-one could go to!