“The main point of attraction was the exhibition “Sympathetic Interaction””

Kommersant FM columnist Dmitry Butkevich talks about the works of classic nonconformism presented at the Museum and Exhibition Center.

My regular listeners probably remember that the city of Ivanovo has just hosted the V Festival of Contemporary Art “The First Factory of the Avant-garde.” The event is multi-genre: a fair of intellectual literature, original excursions around the city, lectures, concerts of classical and modern music, plastic performances, light shows and even a separate internal festival of choreographic performances.

But the main point of attraction, of course, was the exhibition “Sympathetic Interaction”. It was and remains, since the exhibition will be open at the Museum and Exhibition Center until December 3. Curator Alexander Dashevsky managed to very effectively and thoughtfully combine approximately 100 works by classics of nonconformism from the collection of the AZ Museum and contemporary artists.

“Effectiveness” rather refers to the curatorial interpretation, appealing to little-known pages from the history of Renaissance art, all kinds of studies of “humors,” that is, states of the human body, witches’ incantations and other heresies. A kind of space of historical echoes and parallels, which is based on the principle of a mirror, where one era seeks reflection in the experience of the past.

“Thoughtfulness” refers to the formation and display of a collection. Dashevsky surprisingly accurately and accurately distributes magnificent works from the AZ collection and the personal collection of museum director Natalya Opaleva throughout the halls of the Museum and Exhibition Center. Here are some names: Mikhail Shvartsman, Dmitry Krasnopevtsev, Dmitry Plavinsky, Pyotr Belenok, Nikolai Vechtomov, Oscar Rabin, Oleg Tselkov. Among those living today are Grisha Bruskin, Francisco Infante-Arana, Irina Korina, Timofey Radya, Pavel Otdelnov, Dmitry Kavarga, Vladimir Nasedkin.

By the way, Dashevsky, an active and very good artist, managed to resist the temptation to include his own works in the exhibition. Although I always have great doubts about the situation when an artist is also a curator. I think that Seryozha Soloviev, an art critic, art critic, one of the founders of the festival, a native of Ivanovo and my friend, to whose memory this festival is dedicated, could agree with me here and discuss with the artist-curator…