The name for the painting exhibition did not come up by chance. It turned out that Moscow galleries now exhibit mainly conceptual and contemporary art, and the line of exhibitions is scheduled for the year ahead. I recall that the very word concept within the framework of creativity arose somehow by itself at the end of the seventies, it assumed some additional semantic load on an artistic or architectural work. The question of what is conceptual architecture or conceptual art is unequivocally difficult to answer, but in our time it meant something fashionable and modern. Conceptualists staged performances, exhibitions, installations … anywhere, in apartments, in the forest, but they were not allowed into the exhibition halls. Then this phenomenon, as an artistic protest of youth, could be called contemporary art. It took 30 years to legalize and systematize everything. When we learned to sell this product, everything eventually became bureaucratic. Nowadays, Centers and Academies of Contemporary Art have been created, all contemporary artists must now do performances and engage in contemporary art, as they were once forced to develop socialist realism. In my opinion, the same stagnation is observed in the school of architecture. For the sake of the Bologna education system, whole pieces of humanitarian education - painting and drawing - have been cut out of the program; they are now an optional elective. Students do not communicate much, each buried in his own computer. Computer graphics destroy individuality, limit freedom, make everything equally boring.
Against this background, the presented exhibition looks like an outlet, like a breath of freedom. The VKHUTEMAS Gallery exhibited paintings from nature by Elena Budina and Elena Markovskaya. At the opening, it seems to me, the oldest teachers of the Moscow Architectural Institute, Igor Pyatkin and Mikhail Popkov, were most happy. They recalled what a creative atmosphere was in the 50s, when students painted and exhibited their work. The exhibition idea of the VKHUTEMAS gallery is based on the development of artistic creativity and there should be a place for experiment. The interest of the exhibition is that our artists - Elena Budina and Elena Markovskaya have already passed their creative path of maturation. But each of their projects is an experiment. And, although they are very different, they are united by their common ideas, energy and purposefulness. Working together on one idea is also a tradition of the architectural school. They energetically charge each other - the exhibition features about 60 paintings made in six months. The main thing in their work is that they are completely free from fashion and creative influences, they do what they want and do it wonderfully. This time they wanted to paint living things - the beauty of the human body and the beauty of nature, and they did it, not being ashamed of traditional means - on canvases, brushes, simple oil paints. Markovskaya painted nudity. Budina - landscape. In one breath, getting pleasure and joy from your own creativity. And it turned out to be fresh and modern.
Larisa Ivanovna Ivanova-Ven and Anna Ilyicheva showed enough courage by providing their gallery for this experiment.
The exhibition will run until March 18.
