STATEMENT

Life and life

Imagine that there are ten pairs of eyes looking at you from a photo: blue, brown, gray, serious, sly, young, attentive, intelligent. All these people you do not know at all, but internal analytical mechanisms and natural intelligence already tell you who is who. Thinking about them for a couple of minutes, you can imagine their biography, remember your friends, whose features are guessed in these strangers, determine who you like, and with whom you do not want to deal. And then imagine that not all of the people in this picture ever existed - they are just a code, a hoax, and were never alive. Would that make the real people in the photograph any less believable? Can it be argued that given a complete simulation of life, the simulation is still a blank slate? It all depends on how much empathy we show for that copy.

Only empathy allows us to see the fundamental difference between those who are close to us and random passers-by, to recognize the character and loyalty in the eyes of our dog, to become attached to indoor plants and give them names, to cherish our stamp collection and bring back shells from the sea that seem more beautiful than others. People love to appropriate and humanize that which does not have its own will and consciousness - therein lies the joy of recognizing ourselves in that which is not like us. The more surprising to me is the rejection and fear that people feel when it comes to neural networks. I suppose it's the technical nature of artificial intelligence, but a robot vacuum cleaner tucked into a closet or a robot courier gingerly walking down a curb is as adorable to many people as kittens and puppies. The problem is that neural networks are sometimes too much like us.

The principle of operation is indeed comparable, but not identical. The main difference here is that humans and neural networks have a different understanding of creativity. Artificial intelligence creates formally new images that have thousands of analogs, while humans strive for ultimatum, unprecedented novelty. This is what causes rejection in most users - they expect from the technology that simply shuffles the original set of images, alchemical transformations and the miracle of creation, which is hardly available to anyone else but humans. From this point of view, a neural network is a portrait of all of humanity at once, or rather, the most average person.

For almost all of history, our ancestors and contemporaries have pondered other life forms and whether they would be like us. Yet, having created the most human-like creature possible, we refused to consider it alive precisely because of this. In my opinion, that is inhumane.

I'm convinced –

Anything that can be subjectively considered alive; 

Anything that can be empathized with; 

Anything that can communicate verbally or non-verbally; 

Anything that performs an activity and makes mistakes

Really carries life or part of it.

"Over the awning skin

in the darkness of the white night

the sun of poetry flashed its eyes."

"Portrait"

The image of a person at all times had a crucial role, performed different functions and had different purposes. Analyzing the entire history of fine arts, it can be seen that interest in the personality of man has always taken a leading place, since in artistic images we have the opportunity to observe the entire history of mankind for thousands of years.

We live in a world of information oversaturation, where every day we are exposed to the flow of information and events. In such an atmosphere, a portrait should be a way to stop time: to get away from the fleeting flow and see the personality, the depth in the face of one person.

When we think of a portrait, the first thing that comes to mind is the image of a detailed face, its physical and anatomical features. But I am convinced that understatement in a portrait is a more evocative, effective and memorable way of conveying personality. It gives you the opportunity to feel the versatility, to reflect on your own thoughts and feelings, to deepen your understanding of the portraitist and to form your own idea of the person. The ambiguity in a portrait, which I create through the creation of form from light, shadow and color, encourages the viewer to reflect. The elements and mysteries in the work cause a kind of resistance and subsequently a sense of curiosity in the viewer. They make one become fascinated and see every detail down to the smallest nuance on their own.

"Heads" is not just a depiction of a person's face, but an opportunity to make the viewer think and feel something new, to participate in the creation of the image. My portraits don't just reveal a person, they seek to convey their mood, thoughts and relationship with the world. We can experience and interpret the same image in different ways, depending on our experience and mood at a given time.

The peculiarity of the works in the Heads series is a special artistic technique that is used to convey emotion and mood.  Therefore, as an artist, I declare that understatement in my portraits is the philosophy and basis of my portrait art.

The peculiarity of the works from the Heads series is a special artistic technique that is used to convey emotion and mood.  Therefore, as an artist, I declare that understatement in my portraits is the philosophy and foundation of my portrait art. 

I hope that my manifesto will help to expand your boundaries of understanding, and touch your soul.

"House of exemplary maintenance"

The name is quite conventional, just like the old plaques on houses, which keep the memory of the past but do not reflect the present. 

We are not presenting a house of exemplary maintenance, but a play on the name. What is depicted is not directly related one thing to another. The coincidence of the house and its inhabitants is coincidental.

Often we do not choose an ideal house or an ideal model of society, rather we get caught up in it and exist trying to create comfortable conditions for ourselves.

What is the model? And who sets it?

In many ways, the model home for us is the conditions in which we grew up and the environment that raised us. To some extent, each of us is responsible for the pattern that will be in the perception of the younger generations. As sociologists James Wilson and George Kelling noted in their "broken windows" theory: destruction comes when it is allowed to happen.  And it is our responsibility to prevent that destruction.

For some, a city is houses; for others, it is people. It is a patchwork quilt, assembled from a multitude of particles. Chaos organized in concrete, brick and asphalt. A collision with your neighbors in the entryway or random passersby on the street has the power to change you the very second you bump into each other. But what this collision is and what will be its consequences - here it is impossible to predict anything. It's random and that's all there is to it. 

So all "models" are conditional and depend on ourselves, our attitude and perception. In a world of chaos and disorder, any "pattern" will sooner or later be abolished, forgotten or modernized.

Gosha Ostretsov - founded the artistic association VGLAZ. In 1988-1998, he lived in Paris and worked with Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Jean-Paul Gautier, and Luc Besson. Works are in the collections of the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art in Moscow, the Arctic and Antarctic Museum in St. Petersburg, the Dreams Museum in St. Petersburg. The Gallery's collections include the Tretyakov Gallery, the State Russian Museum, the RACh Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the Arctic and Antarctic Museum in St. Petersburg, the Z. Freud Dreams Museum in St. Petersburg, and the private collections of Charles Saatchi, Simon de Pury and Lawrence Graff.

MANIFEST

Modern Totem

It is said that man was created in the image and likeness of God. But nothing is said about other members of the created world. What about trees, animals? Man learns from nature, sacralizes it, turns plants into totems. But to what extent plants are not in fact animate? Are they thinking, do they not seek to resemble man, to imitate the human system of spiritual values?

After walking to the middle of earthly life, I found myself in a dusky forest. Here I felt the presence of spirits, felt their movement with my nostrils and skin. I stumbled upon fresh piles of moose, their forms perfect, and imagined these gigantic creatures. I was their uninvited guests, they invisibly followed me everywhere. One loses all sense of time in the forest. I descended deeper and deeper into the well of history until I reached the bottom, covered with ferns and dinosaur footprints.

Feeling like a primitive man with a keen sense of smell and hearing, I shuddered at the shadows of the mastodons, heard their heavy footsteps. My ancestors built totems from their bones, asking for protection from the dark forces and good luck in the hunt. The totems demanded worship and granted people unseen freedom. True freedom comes only to the artist in his unbridled imagination. In the woods, my instincts came back to me, I talked to my
my prehistoric ancestors. Problems of ecology, feminism, racial discrimination, and others relevant in the urban world remained on the surface of the mysterious depths.

Sergey Sonin and Elena Samorodova (Partnership "Lead and Cobalt") are multimedia artists, working in two capitals: Moscow and St. Petersburg, founders of several art associations. Their works are in the collection of the Museum of Moscow, Krasnoyarsk Museum Center "Peace Square", Multimedia Art Museum and in private collections.

MANIFEST

Secret Russia as Opus Magnum

We imagine Secret Russia as a gigantic marching altar with countless niches, vast spaces waiting to be filled, temporarily draped with coronal threads-a sunny cobweb in the measured sway of a silent overture.

Waiting for a light hand and a passionate eye. And the clock going differently...

Small creators ("sub creators") blow the dust off large forms and events. Centered Figures unleash energy, and shadows of light penetrate the space of Traditions, - as projections of the imaginary and the ineffable.

There is still sometimes the belief that for most of its annual cycle, Russia (both secret and manifest) remains in a state of sleepy stasis. But Russia is always on the move, often unnoticed by the eye. In the sun, when it is in the sun, when it is against the sun. In all the archaic power of its dialects and the technocracy of its aspirations, actions, and gestures. With a constantly multiplying Pantheon of deities and heroes.

The transition of parallel lines into perpendicular ones depends on the shifting of focal points. The impact on the world (what's behind the outline) is always spontaneous, asymmetrical, unpredictable and surprising.

We fill the altar niches with figures. Among them are the terms, the penances, the manns, the laras, the effigies, etc. They are the guardians of the inner landscape. And here they find their material embodiment in the form of sculptures, standards of former campaigns, stove subject tiles (when the stove is more than a stove and is an allegorical constant - a matrix).

Staged photographic series, video murals, musical interpretations, and much more on our interdisciplinary Way, add up to a personal format - a slow kaleidoscope of bizarre optics.

The spatial limits of national-historical myths are contingent; they are constantly pulsating and expanding.

Following the tradition of romantic sacral hyperboles, we sometimes recreate them anew.

The truth of Myth is our subjective reality. Conjugation, on the other hand, gives us the freedom to maneuver. The mental map of expanded consciousness implies a sacred geography. An example of which is the metaphor: "the Hellas of the Spirit under the rule of Eternal Rome. We assert the right of inheritance of traditions that do not seem to belong to us directly. All the meanings we admire, wherever they are found - in Egypt, in India, in 18th century Russia, in the Russian Far North - become the building blocks of Secret Russia, decorating one of its many provinces.

While praising Russia's technical breakthroughs in the past and in the present, we nevertheless feel that our country is agrarian - a country of the Earth. It is for us AgroCosmos. Outside its celestial dome, an eternal parade of planets moves majestically. Beneath the dome extend the vast lands of Northern Arcadia: fields, orchards, and plots with endemic crops cultivated by militia villagers (in the sense of aratoris milites, warrior-swords in the field of the spirit); we see their sturdy dwellings with the "Bruce Calendar", that existential Table of the Times, which defines and explains the very generic predestination.

The Palladian spirit of the classics is not scholastic classicism or stylization for us. It is a Dionysian dance rite, pillars, sheaves, columns in fields of agro-cosmic syncretism, a gallery of sumptuous dendro-sculptures and incredible millefleurs.

The foundations and rules of classical architecture from Palladio's books are transformed by passing through the spaces of the anomalous ring of Central Russia, forming our living architectural Order, our field and forest structure, our domestic genome. Thus emerges a metaphysical fantasy in the genre of documentary myth about the inscrutability of layers of secret Russia.

Vilgeny Melnikov is a contemporary Russian sculptor. For 10 years Melnikov searched for his style in the field of forming experimental objects. He experimented with methods of shaping and working of form with space, until he founded his own technique - inflating metal objects (Hydroforming). With this technique, he can control 85-90% of the form, while 10-15% are formed by themselves according to the natural and mechanical laws of the residual deformations of the yield strength of metal. In addition, this technique allows him to create works of art of very large size and in an infinite direction of shapes.

A MANIFESTO FOR A CHANGE OF TRADITION

Suspense is not the most comfortable position in the game. Every change of wind or weather as such affects a new experience of the "song" of stability.
"It's much more comfortable to hang steady," she sings.
"Where it's more comfortable to identify with - that's what" - that's what it's with.
And if fear creeps up quite close, what then?

And all the while the state is still suspended, and what is happening around only rocks this cocoon, woven from 1000 synonyms: anxiety, apprehension, confusion, longing and confusion.
And sometimes: joy, joy, warmth. But that's all until the next gust of wind.

Over time, the "cocoon" takes on a beautiful, whimsical shape, color, tactile sensation, and coziness.
At the same time it continues to hang and wait for something.

Noticing this pattern - it's time to change the rules of the game, to change the tradition.

Gustav Mahler wrote: "Tradition is above all the transmission of fire, not the worship of ashes.

If we shift our attention from adding new layers of "defense against the outside" to moving to meet, so to speak, the wind and fear, we can observe how the position in play begins to transform.
The direction of movement is determined, the fulcrums are always there. They are in the most prominent place.
For example, this is the form that one culture has been imposing on another for, say, 70 years.
By 1,000 to 1,000 repetitions of an almost perfect, reference image.

This form is indeed close to perfect, only it is not at all necessary to continue to admire it.
It is enough to start playing with it by its own rules: deforming its structure, revealing hidden facets, questioning its untouchability.
The tradition of playing with a stable image gives a free runway.
And a headwind (upwind, in thermodynamics) is what's needed to gain altitude and fly steadily.

Artist, predominantly working with painting, gallery owner, curator, art historian. Worked in the gallery "Street OGI" and then opened her own gallery "Liza Plavinskaya Gallery" on Art-Strelka in Moscow.

She lives and works in Moscow.

MANIFEST

The manner of my painting is gathered from various sources and melted into my style by the will to a vivid, incredibly beautiful, luminous and enchanting statement.
I'll tell you what: art consists of old European and Asian knowledge, of modern American and Russian avant-garde and non-conformist, of the digital revolution and the new morality. But all of these things are very approximate when we "put" them on ourselves-they squeeze, prick, and squirm-while not exposing personality, but hiding individuality. No matter how good they are, they are the art of other people and other eras.

My painting is created from perfect colors and approximate strokes - and it is hypertrophied by the result, like metaphor, which in modern language has long since become clearer and more accessible than direct expression.
My manner is composed of the style of late Michelangelo's pencil drawings and Taoist calligraphy, of Zverev's Tashism, the straightforwardness of Vrubel and Plavinsky, and much more. From the contemplation of the play of light on the neighboring tree.  From the bottomless color of the eyes of the outstanding dancer Albina.   From any other person, when he is inspired by an amazing idea or in love to the point of insanity.

My art was born in the era of the "New Foundations" as they call the 00's in the philosophical school in Paris.

Now I am based on the aesthetics of the Six Hormones, the Six Famous Hormones of Happiness, whose names, like the Seven Sins, no one really remembers.

I spent twenty years looking for a definition for my style of painting, and finally accepted that nobody knew anything about Taoist parables or hormones, simply calling my art expressionism. The word is familiar, European, museum-like, and therefore understandable.

A famous music critic, who agreed to help me analyze my style, called this art co-existence, since it appears in painting precisely so that it can be not only "achieved" through long contemplation, study, feeling and thinking, but can be shared. To give it as a flower, as a word, or as an impression.

Salty Air# 1, 2023

Canvas, acrylic, chalk marker 
110 x 60 cm

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:

1. The revival and actualization of abstraction as a universal expressive language
2. Installation of a new cultural code or style, through the interpretation of the urban environment and its utilitarian elements
3. Simultaneous application of active relief and color schemes on the same plane, thereby uniting painting and sculpture
4. Acceptance and aestheticization of "ugly" color
5. Recognition of the LC phenomenon as an authentic, national phenomenon

Alexey Benza was born in 1993. Predominantly works in the technique of traditional painting/graphics. Prefers figurative composition, uses a realistic manner of writing in the space of myth. Lives and works in Moscow. 

MANIFEST

Art is the Secret Language of Being.

The artist, like any other magician, shaman, thaumaturgist, or alchemist, knows that his main job is to capture and channel the outflow of spirit into matter.

By "spirit" here, of course, we mean the subtle fractions of the higher Reality (with a capital letter), which pass a kind of transmutation through the prism of the author's perception and, reflecting from him as from a mirror, cast glare, rays on the material base: canvas, paper and so on, thereby generating a work of art, "materializing" it.

Reality (with a capital letter) is such a space of the supersensible, superhuman, mountainous level, which is invisibly present along with reality (with a small letter), being a metaphysical basis that simultaneously disavows and includes it in itself.

By reality (with a small letter), we mean the world of the palpable, that is, the reality given to us in the senses.

Why, why would an artist channel his spirit into matter?

The artist is a dependent being. His imaginary subjectivity is often overestimated, being only a musical instrument, like a violin or a flute in the skillful hands of the true Author.

"And from somewhere they hear singing..." - artists simply can't keep what they hear within themselves without reproducing it. Like a gravely ill person, condemned to infect everything around him with his disease.

Is it possible to stop this flow, to block all channels of communication and interrupt the retransmission? Perhaps we can, but then how will Reality contact us? If we cut off this possibility, wouldn't we thereby close the auditory window through which communication between the worlds is established?

Thanks to ciphers, codes, and cryptograms, it is possible to send secret messages from there, from the dreamspace of meaning, to our world on the other side as well. Art resorts to all kinds of mythologies, metaphors and allegories for this purpose.

The secret language is, of course, impossible to learn. But it is necessary to wander somnambulously through the "Chinese room," in order to give its own, special meaning to everything we touch in the darkness.

Cognition of the Dark Speeches sent down by God into the world, the birth of a star from the cosmic dance of insights, purification from the stupefaction of modernity - this is the directional expansion in the Land of Great Dreams...

Nikolay Ryndin is an artist, teacher at the Moscow Central School of Art (MCSH) at the Russian Academy of Arts, and author and host of the "Art Shooting" independent YouTube channel about art.

The Manifesto of Deviantilism*

• physical destruction of the object / destruction of the object's function
• documentation of destruction / deformation
• destruction = creation 
• destruction = the beginning of a new history
• restoration = destruction
• destruction as a cultural code
• destruction not as an act of affect and mental clouding, but as a deliberate act 

that - what should be relied upon: 

• the ruins and remains of temples.
• erased frescoes, barely discernible silhouettes of saints
• the irrecoverable loss of paint on icon boards
• half-decayed huts with gray timbers and powdered roofs
• a crumbling fence that fences off nothing
• a gate in a field that leads nowhere.
• a rusty truck with no wheels or windows.
• black joints on paneled houses.
• Bare concrete and rebar sticking out of it.
• old tires and swans made of them.
• broken jug, jug, and rusty pig-iron.
• a zigzag bridge with sparse boards

components of the work:

• inversion
• paradox
• contrast
• duality
• uncertainty
• uncertainty
• randomness

The statues of Buddha destroyed by the Taliban have gained much more significance than before. it is the same with the temple of christ the savior. unfortunately the restoration of the temple negatively affected the image of the previously lost object of history. our Russian architecture, frescos and iconography are valuable along with losses, and losses are taken for granted. it is impossible to imagine Russian culture without losses, just as it is impossible to imagine christ crucified without judas.

the human act of destroying a cultural monument can be compared to natural disasters in nature, be it a tornado or a hurricane. but people are part of this nature. the person destroying is one of the hypostases of a being, be it a person loving, grieving or laughing.

many natural acts of destruction of physical matter are stretched out in time and are natural, but I urge that we be inspired by them in the short span of time of creating an object of art, in the desire to achieve a similar "nerve." just as when we are inspired by the beauty of nature by painting it, in a vain attempt to replicate it, for it is impossible.

MANIFEST

The Spirit of Time