“Avant-garde thought once seethed here” – Kommersant FM

Kommersant FM columnist Dmitry Butkevich talks about the idea of ​​the exhibition and the “St. Petersburg concept”, which the Ivanovo viewer should appreciate.

You know, in the art world, not everyone is friendly to each other. I wouldn’t even call it envy – just a small world. And you always think that you would talk about it better than your colleague.

But neither I nor, I’m sure, my comrades had such intentions towards Sergei Solovyov. He was a very bright person and an excellent art critic. And, by the way, I’m from Ivanovo. I always wanted to go with him to exhibitions and festivals that Sergei did together with Natalya Opaleva and her AZ Museum, which he once opened. But now I have to live without him. The festival is dedicated to his memory.

The festival of contemporary art “The First Avant-Garde Factory” is held in Ivanovo. The idea is clear – avant-garde thought once seethed here, propaganda textiles were made here in numerous factories by the hands of Varvara Stepanova and Lyubov Popova.

A project curated by St. Petersburg artist Alexander Dashevsky, “Sympathetic Interactions,” opens at the Museum and Exhibition Center. It presents works by artists over the past 60 years. From the collection of the AZ Museum and from contemporary ones – Dmitry Krasnopevtsev, Mikhail Shemyakin, Oleg Tselkov, Dmitry Plavinsky, Grisha Bruskin, Francisco Infante-Arana, Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe, Pavel Otdelnov, Irina Korina, Pyotr Bely, Timofey Radya. Then, apparently, they are completely from St. Petersburg, because I don’t know them: Sergey Denisov, Anna Martynenko, Leonid Kolibaba, Andrey Rudyev.

The concept of the exhibition appeals to the Renaissance. And not just, but to Renaissance medicine, which inherited from antiquity the idea that processes occurring in the body depend on the balance of four humoral substances – blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. It’s like space: earth, fire, water and air. An imbalance in the body affects the world. The visitor to “Sympathetic Interactions” will follow the elemental fluids through the body of the patient-universe.

I’ll tell you honestly, these cleverly invented concepts from St. Petersburg have never been close to me. But let’s see how this will be perceived by Ivanovo viewers. I’ll go and definitely tell you.