Sergey Shekhovtsov
dal 13/6/2013 al 10/8/2013
Segnalato da
13/6/2013
Sergey Shekhovtsov
Ekaterina Cultural Foundation, Moscow
Short Cut. The artist presents more then 40 artworks - sculptures, objects and installations, created over the past ten years. It is an exhibition about Time in the literal and figurative sense of the word, its variability, fluidity and continual mixing and shifting of the meanings.
Curator Elena Selina
As a part of the program demonstrating large-scale personal exhibitions of Russian artists, the Ekaterina Cultural Foundation and XL Projects present the project by Sergey Shekhovtsov, named “Short Cut”.
Sergey Shekhovtsov is one of the most prominent representatives of the contemporary art scene, a participant of more then a hundred Russian and foreign exhibitions, including the 26-th Biennale in San Paulo (2004), Festival “Evropalia 2005”, he was also an exhibitor of the Russian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2009).
The new project presented at Ekaterina Cultural Foundation is the first large-scale exhibition by Sergey Shekhovtsov to be shown in Moscow for the first time. Shekhovtsov’s personal exhibition, will show more then 40 artworks - sculptures, objects and installations, created over the past ten years.
Sergey Shekhovtsov studied to be a painter, but now he is one of the most famous contemporary sculptors. He uses the most “soft” materials for sculpting - foam and foam plastic as basic.
In 2001 there was a feeling that the world is a soft, amorphous and deceptive matter. And in my first project I aimed to show, that the surrounding world is an illusion… Overall it was a pop-artistic saying while the using of graffito instrument in the work with the material has heightened a sense of illusion. The most important things were the texture and the story about softness and hardness. I have been watching, analyzing and, I think, have made a right choice in general and in the material ¦ it can be used to create a whole world and can be used this way or that way. And it has its own philosophy. But over the time all of this became not so important, I started to masque the material make it look like gypsum, plastic. Any fake can be done. The foam material can be a source of many various ideas.”
(from the interview with Sergey Shekhovtsov to Faina Balakhovskaya)
A personal exhibition is some kind of examination for an artist which includes the resume of subtotals, is a reason to analyze his own creativity. The space of the exhibition halls of the Foundation became for Sergey Shekhovtsov the starting point for building exhibition dramaturgy which can be defined as a gradual transition, genre-transformation of the sculpture or object into installation. The title of the exhibition – “Short Cut” – corresponds to the artist’s task and to the type of exhibition organization. The exhibition consists of works represented individually at different exhibition spaces, but in each particular case practically all installation was undergoing or underwent a formal and therefore a meaning transformation, reinstalls according the place and time of the exhibition.
Soft materials are easy for transformations, or for “short cut”, their flexibility allows you not only to shift the meanings, but also to transform a sculpture into installation and vice versa. Thus both plasticity of materials and the talent of the author allow practically in each exhibition to expand or phase down a work according to the artist’s plan and put on the first place the dramaturgy of space organization as a main “instrument”. The exposition is not only the usual chronological parade of works but rather an attempt to highlight the major themes and motifs, emphasize the meanings and construct both the formal space and freedom of interpretation for each submitted work.
“Short Cut” is an exhibition about Time in the literal and figurative sense of the word, its variability, fluidity and continual mixing and shifting of the meanings. Installation “Throne”, stuffed with video cameras in a different context and using the method of “short installation” could be interpreted as “the alien throne” with clear reference to the fiction film “Tron”, while the dogs running to the “Throne” as a scene from animal’s life on the periphery of urban areas, and the artwork “Big Battle” as a inner space of computer shooter game. But in the end in the context of the exhibition these works are transformed into very tough and partly pessimistic assessment of the reality: the specific features of life in a large metropolis, the political climate in the country and foreboding of future world cataclysms…
The exhibition includes as the most known for viewers artworks such as “Metro”, “ATM”, “Cinema” installation, “Throne” and the “Big Battle”; “Easy Rider” composition first shown at the Venice Biennale as a number of new objects and installations.
On June 15 in the frameworks of the exhibition “Short Cut” the Ekaterina Cultural Foundation organized a meeting with Sergey Shehovtsov. Sergey Shehovtsov told the audience about his creativity work, about the periods in classical and contemporary world art which attracted his attention, about his idea to create sculptures from short-life and waste at first sight material, showed his earliest works and demonstrated how one can create a work of art from a piece of foam.
Organizers: Ekaterina Cultural Foundation, XL Projects
Ekaterina Cultural Foundation
Kuznetsky Most St., 21/5, porch 8; entrance from Bolshaya Lubyanka street Moscow, 107996
Opening hours (during exhibitions):
Every day, except Mondays
11 a.m. – 8 p.m.
Ticket office is open untill 7:30 p.m.