Focus. Graphics

On June 8, MYTH Gallery presented a new group project "Focus. Graphics". It became the starting point for the gallery's annual summer exhibitions dedicated to numerous artistic mediums. The first exposition will be focused on graphics, because it is in it that you can trace how the author's thought is first born and formed. An image on paper is often seen as a preparatory sketch for a large job. However, a paper sheet turns out to be more demanding than canvas, metal or clay – the very essence of the idea is concentrated on a limited area. With this exhibition, we want to focus attention on the uniqueness of each author's artistic method, on their ingenuity in working with a limited arsenal of tools and on the self-sufficiency of any graphic work made not only on paper.

The exhibition combine seven artists and groups in whose practice graphics occupy an important place along with painting, sculpture and installation.

The series of works "Mayday mayday mayday" was created by Anna Afonina in residence at the Vladimir Smirnov and Konstantin Sorokin Foundation. Two works from the series are presented at the exhibition and tell about the "post-Soviet prisracological resorts". Photographs from trips of the working class on a trip to the sanatorium, including personal artists, became the basis of paintings.

New watercolors by Lyudmila Baronina from the project "News from Nowhere" are inspired by the novel of the same name by William Morris. In these works, the artist creates a utopian world of vegetable people who have freed themselves from their natural functions in order to become what they dreamed of. Lyudmila unites human anatomy and botany, proclaiming the power of reason and the unity of all living things. Her work on the fabric "The Case in the Bar" with fairy-tale characters demonstrates the decline and destructiveness, horror and fun inherent in the practice of the artist as a whole.

Liza Bobkova is presented with a new watercolor series "Gesture slightly stuck", which continues to reflect on the nature of artistic practice and the loss of the artist's potency in the monotony of work. Her large-scale work on tracing paper with a characteristic sound wave captures the transition to a state of information noise, hints at an abundance of news and summaries. Finally, in the work on the fabric "Acid Tears No. 1", recognizable images are derived with chlorine – attributes of a militant patriarchy, covered with a chronicle of horror and suffering.

Among the works of Petr Kirusha, the exhibition shows graphics made by a new method for the artist. He turns to drawing a continuous line with serpentine movements, like an auto-search. The artist depicts a moment seen in the past and fills the gaps between the movements with ripples, which makes it difficult to see the drawing and creates the illusion of two planes. His watercolors demonstrate an eclectic artistic approach, where found images, pictures from memory and imagination are formed into familiar, but utopian plots.

The watercolor series by the MishMash art group "Figments" is dedicated to the process of living through anxious moments when the world is falling apart, and the brain is trying hard to glue it together. When it's impossible to cover the whole thing, we try to focus on some details while others fall apart. In MishMash's watercolors, familiar everyday objects blur, dissolve and gather into new garlands of meanings.

Nikita Seleznev, in a graphic from the "Shaving the Christ" project, explores quasi-religiosity and myth models that find support in the mass consciousness. The artist speaks on the topic in an already recognizable language, in which classical sculptural plastic is mixed with markers of pop culture.

In his artistic practice, Dima Filippov explores the relationship between man and landscape, the phenomenon of border territories. In the "Colorland" series of graphics, the averaged landscape signs are complemented by still unformed images. Blurred color spots turn into lines and dissolve back into the unfocused landscape.

The exhibition includes design objects provided by the Moscow conceptual space 3L Store. 3L combines contemporary art, subject design and design bureau in one place and presents objects created by both famous and young authors. The philosophy of space is based on simplicity and attention to details, materials and the artistic component of objects.

Photo: Elik Iafarov