Not love

Not Love

The exhibition comprises five scenes, each an episode from the particular lives of Lina, Anastasia, Ekaterina, Dasha, and Nastya. They are artists who materialize inevitable processes, the principal participants of which are themselves. The scenes presented are not directly related to each other, this connection is fleeting and fragmentary. They possess but one unifying element – the Future, echoing in a Past saturated with Love. The Present is one that preserves Hope as the frustration of uncertainty.

And so, the first scene – “My Greatest Love of mine” by Dasha Chichak.

“…I wanted to say just one thing—without love, life is utterly meaningless.”

This work unveils a picture both dramatic and intimate, where each actor plays their own distinct role. Oddly enough, there are no secondary characters. Everyone is a part of a whole, universal, unifying tragedy. The catastrophe that is taking place before our eyes is surrounded by a backdrop, or rather, a wall of darkness and silence, from whose smudges and vague contours emerge faces marked by grief. This backdrop with surgical precision points to the address of life's fundamental law – Eros et Thanatos. The physical capacity to feel the manifestation of Love is lost, replaced by its phantom, a hazy memory of happiness once lived.

 

The second scene – “igäine kodi” (“eternal home”) by Anastasia Nesterova.

“…But one thing is clear to me: leaving my native places granted me the possibility to perceive their significance from the height of the path traveled.”

Visions are rarely clear. They are like a filmstrip accidentally spliced together from fragments of different movies. Shifting, sometimes overlapping one another, sometimes appearing clear and distinct, images of the past create a sensation of the instability and illusory nature of the present. Meanwhile, the author herself exists in a world of fog and dreams of an irretrievably lost world. Old, nearly decayed wooden window frames of a vanished house carry in their sockets the imprints of a bygone era. Somewhere overflowing with images of an irrevocable happy life, somewhere gaping with the frightening emptiness that life itself is playing its endless game with us.

The acid-etched images are executed on black metal, which has its own propensity to decay with time, but wood has less time. And if the frame that borders them vanishes into oblivion, the imprints of the experienced Past will remain with us for a long time to come.

 

The third scene – “The Radiance” by Ekaterina Kolosovskaya.

“Every madness has its own logic. This logic often eludes the rational human mind, manifesting in unexpected forms and connections.”

Johann Pachelbel’s Ciacona in Fa minor most accurately conveys the sensations arising from being near this spatial composition. The work itself is highly theatrical, channeling our imagination to the finest works of 1970s domestic cinema and, naturally, to the futuristic philosophy of Ray Bradbury and Stanisław Lem. Life, born from chaos, will inevitably be destroyed by this same chaos so that it may be reborn anew, with its former purity.

But this is not all that is hidden within this work. The artist is literally screaming at us – stop. The symbolism is evident – the earth, granting life, the tree it spawns, and the progeny of human reason – a heavy metal roller, moving to destroy everything that it itself is. The parallels and associations of emerging meanings are multiple and obvious. One, however, is paramount – the Hope that after destruction, all will be reborn and repeated anew.

 

The fourth scene – “The Convertation” by Anastasia Gosudarenkova.

“…I possess the tearful happiness of depicting what I cannot say with words, but create with my body, a dot, a line, dust, acid, electric current, hands in gauntlets, coal and graphite, and a phone camera.”

One day, you find yourself in the bustling tunnels of the metro, in underground walkways beneath wide streets. The only thing you feel is the desire to move from point A to point B, and as quickly as possible. Among the countless rushing people, you notice elbows, bags, feet in shoes, the vague silhouettes of others just like you. Everything happening around is too fast, too chaotic, fragmentary, and not intended for stopping and contemplation.

One day, in this passage, a girl could run no further. Utterly defenseless against the surrounding rush, she peered into the quiet depths of herself.

One day, in this passage, two people stopped to secretly confess their love to each other. Through an innocent kiss, time itself stopped.

One day, in this passage, a person grew tired of running with everyone else and found his home. Being below everyone else, in an attempt to become part of the space and find peace in going unnoticed.

One day, in the Present, may you also stop.

 

The fifth scene – “All the world’s stage” by Lina Stavnichuk.

“…not an exhibition in the conventional sense. It is an inner space of experience, inviting one to reconsider one’s movements, one’s participation, the mundane rituals we perform unconsciously, yet within which our drama lies hidden.”

As in childhood, upon entering an unfamiliar space, we begin to explore it, involuntarily submitting to another's intention.

— Whose design?

— A benevolent one?

— A malevolent one?
Rather, an indifferent one. The intention of an unknown builder, whose sole task was to create this intricate architecture. Accepting the proposed rules, you try on a new role, different from your familiar sense of self. Like an actor transforming on stage, living the life and fate of a character created by the playwright. Wandering among the nooks of pillars and walls, aggressively bristling rods, scattered coal dust, black spots of paintings on the walls, you arrive at the final point – ultimum punctum. And this journey suddenly acquires meaning and becomes profoundly personal for the traveler. On this path, there was a collision with the Past, the Hope for a wondrous Future, and a collision with the Present, whose sole meaning is Love.

Having played their roles, the actors remove their props and wash off their makeup. They put on their usual clothes and return to a world filled with not love.

Associate Professor Kirill Spasskov

Photo: Ivan Sorokin