27.01.2023
Andrei Kalmykov
I declare the arrival of Vesna in Russian contemporary art as a revival of the legacy of the avant-garde and the establishment of a new abstract language.
THE MANIFEST OF SPRING
I declare the arrival of Vesna in Russian contemporary art as a revival of the legacy of the avant-garde and the establishment of a new abstract language.
The avant-garde, like an abandoned and unloved child, has been long forgotten and rejected by society, the very new society it was supposed to serve. Recognized as a failed experiment, it abandoned the art scene for a long time, giving way to popular lubok and realism.
It was time for the visionary ideas once created to return to the scene to become, with renewed and fresh vigor, the main symbol and reflection of reality.
The new Russian abstractionism will no longer stare at the cosmos, at the distant stars and the universal absolute. On the contrary, it will look under the feet, to the mundane environment in which we live - the dusty streets, the facades of apartment blocks, and the gloom of doorways!
The new Russian abstractionism soaks up the rough textures of concrete, puts on a multi-layered skin of oil paint, displays an endless string of fences and green garages, bristles with metal mesh like a wild animal, and is covered in a scattering of chipped mosaics!
The main colors will be the colors of fences and street lamps, freshly painted benches and plinths, transformer boxes and entryways. Red-brown, military green, indifferent gray, mechanical blue will make laconic monolithic compositions. Long live the colors of porches, schools and hospitals - faded yellow, stale lettuce and dusty pink! And beneath this simple color scheme will hide the rough texture of the chaos of urban forms and artifacts.
The housing estate, a spontaneous and unrestrained phenomenon that renews our streets every year and forms the basic image of the city, will be the main source of inspiration and metaphor of the Russian space. However, the artist should not blindly copy the wall of a house or a fence repainted for the hundredth time, but like a sensitive cutter work with this wild material as with unprocessed rock.
I declare Vesna a new cultural code for Russian visual art. Vesna will be a reflection of our mentality and environment of existence. Instead of Khokhloma and Gzhel - a red-rusted parapet, instead of kokoshnik and matreshka - a gray fence and a chain of green garages, instead of the bear with balalaika - Rabita wire mesh and broken tiles!
Spring sets the following tasks:
- The revival and actualization of abstraction as a universal expressive language
- Installation of a new cultural code or style, through the interpretation of the urban environment and its utilitarian elements
- Simultaneous application of active relief and color schemes on the same plane, thereby uniting painting and sculpture
- Acceptance and aestheticization of "ugly" color
- Recognition of the LC phenomenon as an authentic, national phenomenon
