It is no secret that usually jubilee events imply pomp and solemnity, and exhibitions dedicated to such dates are created in a strict "reporting" format. But the opening of the "Portrait of a Teacher" exposition dedicated to the professor of Moscow Architectural Institute Alexander Ermolaev, although it retained all the features of the anniversary event, completely refuted these rules. The secret is simple: the curators of the exhibition Tatiana Shulika, Vlad Savinkin and Vladimir Kuzmin were guided by the basic principles of the hero of the day “art should be free from fancy and twists, for an artist the most important thing is the ability to feel and naturally express his feelings”. All the project participants - the numerous students of Ermolaev - were given complete freedom of expression, and therefore the opening of the exhibition turned out to be quite traditional in form (welcome speeches and words of congratulations) and at the same time very bright and non-trivial in content (which is only one of the choir of Moscow Architectural Institute students in clown costumes, performing songs from the film "Election Day").
The exposition "Portrait of a Teacher" includes works by Nikita Leonov, Ilya Zalivukhin, Igor Danilov, Vlad and Eva Savinkin, Olga Khaldeeva, Pavel Klimov, Olga Dikhtenko, Alexey Usachev, Elena Petko and many other architects, artists and designers who studied at MARCHI at Alexander Ermolaev. Each of them presented an installation or sculpture dedicated to the teacher's birthday.
For example, Elena Petko showed a collage based on a page of notes from Ermolaev's lectures. Above is the date of the lecture, March 1999, the topic is "Creative assistance", the words of the teacher, and around the artwork. Alexey Usachev presented a plush composition - a huge armchair made in the shape of a Cheburashka, which is supported by four miniature crocodiles of Gena. Vlad and Eva Savinkin assembled the Children's Architecton - a tall tower glued together from cardboard elements that in many ways resemble the details of packaging, from which kids really love to build houses and fortresses.
Among the works presented, the impressive "Individual chair", welded from metal structures and equipped with wheels for mobility, and a huge animal named Polkan, made of foam sheets, and a rack filled with nuts, figs, dried fruits, which was called “table with refreshments ". The central place in the exposition was taken by the portraits of Professor Ermolaev, also made from a wide variety of materials and demonstrating the breadth of the Teacher's creative method and the very concept of "protoform". So, on the picturesque diptrich of Larisa Klimova and Tatyana Shulika, the master's face is barely outlined - there is no mouth, no eyes, no nose, only the famous snow-white mustache. Ilya Zalivukhin, who believes that “the portrait of a teacher is his students,” presented a group photograph of the TAF members at the exhibition. And the work of Evgeny Mavrin "Palych" was a wooden frame of a dining table, inside which was an armful of slats, branches, baseboards and other wooden products.
Numerous proto-objects occupied the entire exhibition space of the Aptekarsky Prikaz, so that the hero of the day and his guests had to be located right between the installations. It must be said that this was to the liking of the adult followers of Ermolaev, and even more so to their children, the third generation of "Tafovites" who comprehend the ideas of ecological, expressive and honest architecture from a very young age.
