A portal to another dimension has opened in the Ground Solyanka gallery

The planetites landed in Moscow

One day, carpenter Giuseppe carved an extraordinary Pinocchio from an ordinary log and gave it to his friend, the organ grinder Papa Carlo. The artists who work at the Ermolova Theater, Evgeny Grinevich and Natalya Kulikova have thousands of such Buratinos. Like the carpenter from the good old fairy tale, they turn firewood logs, driftwood, old furniture or fences into living characters called Planeteers. The universe of wooden fantastic “people” was born in the minds of the artists after a trip to India, acquired details during expeditions to the Kola Peninsula and materialized into a separate planet in their dacha art residence near Moscow. Now the Planeters have inhabited the Ground Solyanka gallery.

Fluffy shoulder-length hair, kind eyes and golden hands. The artist Evgeny Grinevich resembles the actor Yuri Katin-Yartsev in the role of the carpenter Giuseppe from the cult film adaptation of Alexei Tolstoy’s fairy tale “The Adventures of Buratino”. For many years, Evgeniy and his wife Natalya have been creating their own wooden Planetaries, and the duo calls themselves the same. Over the years, many handwritten books, poems have grown around the Planetary universe, and there is even an encyclopedia about a fantasy world. A variety of publications – each with its own character – greet visitors at the entrance to the Planetary Station exhibition. And behind the door is that very station of extraterrestrial beings.

Cosmic sensations arise as soon as you cross the threshold of the exhibition. The black walls are decorated with funny drawings and you find yourself among black and white images of the Planetaries, between which white dots-stars also “glow”. A character in a spacesuit stretched out at the sides looks at you from the corner. There is already a whole collection of these in the space corridor-portal. There is a square, triangular, round and a separate compartment with the sign “exit”, where you can try on a variety of spacesuits to feel like an astronaut. There are seven spaces in total at the “Planet People Station”, each of which you can go into, communicate with and touch their inhabitants.

In the first, the Planeteers sat on a podium in several tiers. “This is a sacred place,” explains Evgeniy Grinevich with a smile. A collection of myths, superheroes and cults of the fantastic Universe is concentrated here. Here is Hypnochel – he hypnotizes with his button eyes. Multi-colored pencils stick out from Churchel’s head. Chebuchel has big ears and a serious look. And the eared trio called “Green Bunny” has colors reminiscent of watermelons. The second room has a mirrored floor and is illuminated with a multi-colored color spectrum, where yellow turns into crimson. Anthropomorphs float in such an atmosphere. They have everything like humans – legs, arms, heads. Only they are put together like funny puzzles: on wooden shoulders there is a pebble, painted like an Easter egg or a cube.

In the next space, where the walls are already mirrored, we observe the process of the birth of Planetaries. Transparent figures (here made of plastic) are painted with black and white patterns and hang upside down. They are like butterflies that are about to hatch from a cocoon and gain wings. A couple more steps – and we find ourselves among the flora and fauna inhabiting the Planetean station. Thin trunks of birch trees stretch from floor to ceiling – with characteristic black spots, but some of them are green or brown. Spiders, bugs and worms crawl on them, each with its own name. There is, for example, cartilage or bat muscle. Space rockets fly around, square mushrooms grow on the green grass, and strange birch-colored animals with pig heels (called birch trees) walk around.

In the finale, we are again in a cartoon space that moves on a big screen, and the floor of the space is covered with Soviet carpets. Against this background stand figures in spacesuits with trunks or floppy ears (by the way, each of them was skillfully woven by Natalya from newspapers). The Planeters are dressed up in unusual costumes, and on their feet are flippers or felt boots. They look at the globe of the planet Hindia, invented by artists.

“Hindia was born after our first trip to India,” say Evgeniy and Natalya. – This story is based on Indian culture, which we “replay” in our planetary language. In general, we work on a whim – first a character appears, and then it becomes overgrown with a story. This is a fiction that anyone can continue and develop. At our exhibitions we try to integrate the audience into the exhibits, and the exhibits into the audience: we study them, and they study us. This is a fiction that anyone can continue.