It was a productive time to receive feedback and present my work. Firstly, I opened an exhibition with two other artists in Munich. I have been working with this gallery for the second season and I understand that this is not only a commercial orientation, but an influence on me in what I do. The gallery works in pop art, so in principle, my conceptual approach does not really fit there, but nevertheless, I am extremely grateful for this experience and the opportunity to show my work.
But unfortunately, I haven't sold a single work this year, so, as I understand it, the gallery has no interest in working with artists who are not in demand among the public. Perhaps some might say that it doesn't matter - commercial is not necessarily good art, but the problem is, as I noted before, I need to earn money to pay the bills, otherwise I need to stop studying and go to work as a cashier at a grocery store. I tried all the time to balance between commercial and “high” art, but I also understand that the gallery doesn't like which direction my work is going. They say what colours they like - only positive ones, but in contrast, I want to talk about the problems of war, loss and pain, and these are not colourful colours at all.
I constantly apply for competitions, grants and other galleries, but there is no result. Now there was another Art Karlsruhe exhibition and again I didn't sell a single work, and I had to place all the art objects in a dusty garage since there is simply no storage space in my studio.
And this makes me sad - these works are the tortured days and weeks of my work, I lived every detail of them through my body and now they stand somewhere packed and dusty, abandoned and no one needs them. But now I’m thinking more globally - why should I do anything more? To put everything in the garage where no one can see my work...
I’m trying not to give up, but the pessimistic mood doesn’t leave me and it’s not clear how to continue working.
So the first exhibition was in Munich. Exhibition in Munich https://youtube.com/shorts/wr8bvbXj1jk
As I said, I could not particularly influence the choice of works, and yet the gallery supports me so much that they agreed to show my new works - where I break the colourful field and move on.
There were a lot of people at the opening and of course, most of them paid attention to the delicate work with colour and the aesthetics of these works. At the same time, again, several works were damaged - people simply come very close to them and do not pay attention to their fragility. The gallery is not happy, I'm horrified.
I also walked around the gallery and “eavesdropped” on what the spectators were saying. One lady somehow unfriendly commented that the whole technique is very simple, just put everything together and spray it with a can from different sides. At the same time, in most cases, it is precisely this feature of my works that viewers pay attention to and do not understand how it was done, that the colour changes depending on the position of the sides.
Besides this, I should also note that the audience paid even more attention to me, and only then to my art - “Are you the artist of these works?” "How interesting!". It’s not very clear to me that it’s specifically interesting that I have long legs or blue eyes or how “all this” can create art and talk about metaphors and concepts. Or through the positivist theory - people simply like me and that’s the only reason they like my art. But here again, I’m sad, because I would like my art to speak for itself.
The next stop in the direction of collecting critical opinion on my work is “Silent Critic” at OCA.
I presented two works:
Untitled (Fairy tale), 2024, recycled newspapers, canvas, paint, screws, metal grid, cardboard, acrylic, fixatives, wood, 104 x 174 x 15 cm.
Harmony in Chaos, 2024, canvas, paint, paper, screws, metal grid, cardboard, acrylic, fixatives, wood, 100 x 150 x 15 cm.
And my fellow students focused on the yellow work, and in the two minutes remaining for comments for the work “Harmony in Chaos” they said that this flashy, shouting work, unlike the settled yellow one.
Firstly, I realized that a person reacts sensitively to work if he is close to and interested in either colour or material or form.
There were such comments on the yellow work - incredible tactility and narrative, but the direction of the message is not clear. It turns out that something attracts, but what it is is not clear. In principle, this is exactly what I need; if I want to communicate with the soul and emotions, then I need to turn off the viewer’s brain, not give him figurative associations and directions for thoughts. "- The manipulation and reinterpretation of discarded materials is particularly fascinating." It turns out that in this work the meaning of the material is well changed and processed into something that attracts and motivates recognition.
Someone also saw work with negative space, which I hadn’t even thought about. And these elements from the negative space seem to have been removed somewhere else.
Also noted was the dynamic combination of two contrasting surfaces - the upper soft newspaper and the lower hard and rhythmic wood. It is associated with different emotions. Most reacted primarily to the soft colour. One of the important comments was that the materials seemed dirty and I was repainting them with clean paint. Then I thought that it’s really that I feel the dirtiness of what Russia is doing and the desire to reassemble and remake, decorate, and transform. And there were many comments that these sticks and some elements resemble debris in the water, somewhere on the seashore.
Tom Cartmill was recommended to me for benchmarking.
“Change through time and the inevitable accumulation of experience are themes that have underpinned my practice from early on. The way that buildings and much used objects age, weathering and transforming with the passage of time, is a constant source of inspiration. I work at evoking a ‘patina of experience' in my pictures. This directly relates to the methods used to make my work, where I combine conventional painting techniques with more innovative processes: Layers of media are built up, to be abraded, worn through and overlaid yet again, mirroring the passage of time and giving glimpses of the unfolding story of the making of the work itself.
As well as an abiding interested in visual perception, I am interested in the function of memory, in particular, the fact that our understanding of the world around us (people, places, concepts) is filtered or conditoned through our memories. There also seems to be a connection that, however much we toil to comprehend and to broaden our knowledge, our understanding will never be whole.” Tom Cartmill [online] At: https://www.open-studios.org.uk/entry/2023/tom-cartmill (Accessed 05.03.2024)
«scoring, ripping, tearing, hammering, beating the surface of the paper» These are the most interesting words - how the artist conveys and analyses time, memory and history through the material. Yes, I really see the connection here through detailed work and respect for the material. Tom Cartmill also has shapes that he returns to: circle and square.
But to move forward, I want to talk about one more event that helped me understand a little more what I want.
Not to mention the fact that again the gallery allowed me to participate in the hanging and installation of the entire exhibition - this is an invaluable experience for my practice.
Set up process at Art Karlsruhe, Germany https://youtube.com/shorts/6NaGPawjF8U?feature=share
Video from the exhibition – Art Karlsruhe https://youtube.com/shorts/--GiMeDkqkQ
I worked all days on the stand just to talk to people I didn't know and their reactions on my art.
The most radical comments were - “I have newspapers and wooden sticks at home, so I can repeat this with my grandchildren...”, “I have already seen such works from another Chinese artist”... Here the only thoughts that come to mind are about the fact that a child can also paint like Jackson Pollock))))) or “your materials are of course different,” but from a distance, all the paintings look the same, which means they are all copies of one another?!) ))))) So no comments.
But two moments brought me to tears.
This is what one girl sketches of my work. Of all the works at the exhibition, this girl chose my work - not pop art, not a photograph of a person, not a landscape painting, but my sticks, debris and newspapers made her want to enter into a dialogue with my work.
And another thing - a very culturally savvy gentleman (we were having a long discussion about art) noticed a small nail deliberately sticking out of one of the sticks in my work.
I thought about these details and this nail in particular and changed its position and shape many times, so like that I show my respect to the material and start a discussion with the viewer. And this viewer understood everything I wanted to say, or rather, he didn’t understand, but felt.
These two examples clearly outlined the work area for me. Emotional involvement through the quality of materials and subsequent narrative-sensory communication.
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