solo show Taguti

«ARBOR: VITAL FORM»

18.10 — 13.11

Winzavod Contemporary Art Center, 4 Syromyatnichesky Lane, 1/8, building 9, entrance 22

It is amazing that we see trees and are no longer surprised by them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

At the heart of Taguti's work is human destiny, memory and suffering, the trauma of post-imperial consciousness, the multi-layered and specific information noise in which we live in an attempt to preserve, if not human dignity, at least a human dimension.

Taguti creates work in series and each exhibition is a gesture, considered, staged and lived. She uses a variety of techniques and works with several themes, preferring black and white, but sometimes delicately introducing colour into her compositions. Consciously restricting herself to colour, the artist works extensively with lines and plastics. She draws portraits, Stalinist architecture or creates ornaments to create a kind of mythological space («Great Portrait», «Embrace», «The Second Soul», «Pages of the Family Album», «Lace and Vibrations», etc.).

Taguti has always been fascinated by the phenomenon of the palimpsest (manuscripts found on second-hand parchment). The palimpsest with Taguti «is like an image of the layered nature of life: you look at what the past shines through and what the future will shine through». The basic background can be a picture on a canvas of the principle scheme or something decorative. The first layer is then painted on, but if it becomes too realistic then destructed, blurred: «Then I paint over everything with white paint. Something comes through. And then I start to take that 'something' out, I start to paint again, but not by tracing the old one, but drawing a little bit side by side, creating a new optic. I don't know what I'll end up with - each time it's a struggle with the material».

Particularly large-scale dramas are heard in the series of scenic canvases «Trees» presented in the exhibition «ARBOR: vital form», painted on canvases in acrylic, charcoal and sanguine. Authentic, unusual, very energetic portraits of trees with no background in a metaphysical environment - no earth, no sky, trunks and branches, sometimes strongly reminiscent of the anatomy of the body with blood vessels and muscles, joints and articulations.

«The trees are like a disparate army of veteran soldiers, called to guard and protect us, breathing in carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen», – says Taguti. «Exhausted by battle and the long road, they screw themselves into the hard, unfriendly urban soil, unashamed of their wounds and mutilations».

«Trees are like people turned upside down. They think, they communicate through their roots, we can only see a small part of them, the bulk is hidden in the ground, where secret and even mystical life takes place. The roots 'think' and send signals to the top of the plant», – continues the artist.

«The trunks are the human body and the roots are intertwined arms, legs, shins, knees and sometimes our insides. Sometimes you can guess the back, tail, paws or eye of a mysterious beast».

«Trees, more than anyone, are hostages to their fate: they cannot change their place of life, and if they leave it, they will leave it forever – under the onslaught of a hurricane or under a merciless saw. Like old soldiers, they continue to save us, inhaling carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen».

Fragments of Maria Savostyanova article are used in the text
«Russian artist Katya-Anna Taguti in search of the patterns of an elusive life», RAF

Taguti Anna-Katia

Anna-Katia Taguti (Ekaterina Kozlova) was born in Riga in the family of the artist Yakov Kozlov, a representative of the academic school of Russian painting. Her mother's cousin Yitzhak Ben-Zvi Shimshelevich was the second president of Israel. Anna graduated from Moscow State Academic Art Institute named after V. I. Surikov at the Russian Academy of Arts (workshop of monumental art by Claudia Tutevol, student of Alexander Deineka).

He has been a member of the Moscow Union of Artists since 1984.

She lives and works in Moscow.

Winner of the 2018 American Art Awards, 1st and 2nd place in the Portrait of Someone Famous category.

The works are kept in the collections of Museum of Jewish painters (New York, USA), Franz Meserel Graphic Centre (Belgium), Il Museo Internazionale della donna nell'arte - MIDA (Scontrone, Italy), Museum of Moscow Artists (Moscow, Russia), Novosibirsk Art Museum (Novosibirsk, Russia), Norilsk Art Gallery (Norilsk, Russia), Erarth Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia).

SOLO EXHIBITIONS:

2022 – Arbor: life form, a-s-t-r-a gallery, Winzavod Contemporary Art Center, Moscow, Russia.
2022 – The Slipping Pattern of Physical Life on the Fabric of Inexorable Time, museum-exhibition centre Ivanovo, The First Vanguard Factory, Ivanovo, Russia.
2021 – The Cross and Hammer, museum-exhibition centre Ivanovo, The First Vanguard Factory, Ivanovo, Russia.
2019 – The Big Portrait project, Erarta Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
2015 – Exhibition in All-Russian Decorate Art Museum, Moscow, Russia.
2015 – The People project, paintings, a multimedia installation,
with the participation of Garik Dralkin and Anna Shapiro, Project Fabrika, Moscow, Russia.
2014 – The Sheet project, a multimedia installation, сomputer graphics by Garik Dralkin, video-art by Anna Shapiro, Makaronka Cultural Centre, Rostov, Contemporary Art Center Fabrika, Moscow, Russia.
2013 – Laces and Vibrations, textiles, graphics, panels, Erarta Museum, London, UK.
2012 – The Eighth Project, textiles, reliefs, panels, art-video, Erarta Museum, London, New-York, USA.
2009 – The Eighth Project, textiles, reliefs, panels, art-video, Project Fabrika, E-K ArtBureau, Moscow, Russia.
2008 – Signs and Direction, relief objects, art-video, E-K ArtBureau, Moscow, Russia.
2006 – The Second Soul, objects, art-video, Elena Vrublevskaya Gallery, Moscow, Russia.
2003 – Kitaishchina, Manezh Gallery, Moscow, Russia.
1998 – The Nameless Orient, Museum of the Orient, Moscow, Russia.
1995 – Tsarism, Yakut Gallery, Moscow, Russia.
1994 – Gestalt, Phoenix Municipal Exhibition Hall, Moscow, Russia.
1993 – Palimpsest, Exhibition Centre of the Lenin Museum, Moscow, Russia.
1992 – Exhibition at Lifton Park, Devon, UK.

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS AND PROJECTS:

2021 – Paper biennale Shanghai, China.
2021 – The 3rd International Triennial of Contemporary Graphics, Novosibirsk, Russia.
2018 – Winner of the 2018 American Art Awards, 1st and 2nd place in the Portrait of Someone Famous category.
2015 – Global Paper 3, Museen der Stadt Deggendorf, Germany.
2013 – Third prize in the Revolution in Light competition, SCOL, Braille luminaire project, Moscow, Russia-France.
2012 – Residence of the Rockefeller Foundation, Bellagio, Italy.
2011 – Graphic experience at the France Mazerel Centre, Belgium.
2011 – IV Book Image Competition, First Prize in the Artist's Book category for The Book-Window. The Story of a Landscape project, jointly with Georgy Dralkin, Moscow. Russia.
2008 – Symposium organised by the Oskar Kokoschka Museum, special jury prize KUNST for The Creator's Diary project. Pöchlem, Austria.
2007 – Grand Prix for The Clothes for Shaman Festival art video, Golden Tambourine festival, Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia.