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Tatyana Nazarenko (Moscow) «Time extinct» (sculpture, painting,
photo-collage, video)
19.01 — 12.03.2006
Tatyana Nazarenko is one of the best-known figures in the Russian art, and her
works do not require special furtherance.
As long ago as the early 1970s, her «Execution of Narodniks»
displayed at the youth exhibition shattered the stereotypes of the Soviet
consciousness: daring as it was, her interpretation of the historical event had
transgressed the sacred reference point of New Time (1917). It was this canvas
that made art critics speak about a new generation of artists and new trends in
art.
To this very day, the artist commands a heightened attention of the press, and,
driven by passionate love of life, she keeps creating works in various
techniques and genres, drawing upon the novel things that time obligingly
offers.
Her interest in the national history, which was evident in her best-known
canvases such as «Execution of Narodniks», «Pugachov»,
«Uprising of the Chernigov Regiment» and others, as well as the
much-talked-of projects «Transition», «Moscow Table»,
«Tatyana Nazarenko's Monuments», reveals itself again in the
«Vanishing Time» project to be displayed at the KvadraT Gallery on
19 January 2006.
The first part of the project was executed in 1999, when near the Kutafya Tower
of the Kremlin a monument to «A Woman-worker and Peasant» was
erected, it was made of short-lived materials (plywood) and represented
sculptural characters the ideas of which Nazarenko had borrowed from V.I.
Mukhina.
It was then that the artist had a facetious hunch to create a totally different
monument — a mobile set made from cheap and light materials. These
monuments, the author believed, could relieve the monumental propaganda and
appease absolutely all layers of society for the simple reason that the material
was cheap and the monument «mobile».
One should not take it seriously. The artist's idea harbours a lot of sarcasm.
Back then, five years ago, she tried to apply the rule of contraries to prove
that without an organizing idea the «monumental propaganda» can
sooner arouse «fear of stupidity» than «fear of the
future».
Today, in the Russian protracted times of troubles, this theme appears extremely
topical, and Nazarenko, developing the subject matter of mobile monuments
executed in the «SCULPTURE-AMBULANT» genre in her «Vanishing
Time» project, grieves about the fragility of being that is being
encroached upon by absurdity.
Tatyana Nazarenko — emeritus artist of Russia, winner of the State
Prize of the Russian Federation, full member of the Russian Academy of Fine
Arts, Professor at Moscow State Surikov Academic Arts Institute
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