Contributing artists:
Roger SCHALL, Antanas SUTKUS, Pavel BANKA, Philippe TARABELLA, Igor SAVCHENKO, Laurent FIEVET, Sergey MAXIMISHIN, Igor MOUKHIN, Evgeny MOKHOREV, Vadim GUSCHIN, Alexander SEMENOV, Olga FEDOROVA, Oleg DOU, Dmitry SOKOLENKO, Shunsuke OHNO, Ilya DOLGOV, Katerina BELKINA, Ilan WEISS, Anna DANILOVA, Nicolas TOLMACHEV
For its new exhibition, the gallery RUSSIANTEAROOM launches into choreography, whose main motive is “L’Elégance’’.
Essentially photographic, punctuated by a few keystrokes, this portrait that we want to paint is an impossible portrait because it is transient. It's a question of taste, time and spectator’s sensitivity. Elegance is something personal and timeless at the same time. Let’s see…
Without elegance of the heart, there is no elegance at all.
Yves Saint-Laurent
Straight back, cold and a little mysterious look, unapproachable posture, simple haircut, noble materials, attention to detail, immaculate white, discreet accessories – from the outset, when we talk about elegance, we think of women fashion rather, or those who know how to wear it.
L’élégance est une notion énigmatique, un peu comme l’âme.
Everyone is talking about it, but no one can simply, scientifically describe it. And yet, fashion magazines were created to teach us as in school. Hélas! You can erase wrinkles, learn how to walk with your back straight, buy the most beautiful clothes – and yet elegance does not come! One can not explain this venerated quality, it is an inner melody, simple and sophisticated at the same time.
The exhibition '' Elegance '' is a case study, a lyrical overview, a walk in a luxurious boutique, where you will be able to touch the clothes, feel them, but without going further or offer them …
Photography seems to me to the privileged medium if you want to talk about elegance. What can better than photography capture the pose, the attitude, the spirit, visible or hidden. Photography remains a medium of the moment, and therefore of sincerity, where each device will be more visible, in relief. "Without elegance of heart, there is no elegance," Yves Saint-Laurent's words give photography a “carte blanche”. So, with his help and small discrete interventions of the drawing, let's try to understand the elegance …
What is surprising in the first place is a certain 'rigidity' of the subjects, animated or not; women are frozen in a pose in the same way as a forgotten cabbage on a bench or jellyfish floating in the water at least 1 of Alexander Semenov, it is the parade of charm and grace. It is said that a person can be elegant regardless of his social status, that elegance is not only reserved for privileged. It is the elegance that will distance you from the rest of the mortals by putting you on an inaccessible pedestal. If you find your golden rule – and if you have that “jenesaisquoi” – you will join Coco Chanel, even if you are just a simple and modest flowering plant of Ilya Dolgov.
Artists presented by Russiantearoom treat elegance in different forms. What unites them is frail poetry, as Pavel Banka’s artworks, where the most trivial objects have beautiful faces and bodies, and elegance passes through these compositions; or like Philippe Tarabella’s works, Parisian walker, in love with unexpected. Some of them look at the world with tender humor, like Sergey Maximishin, one of the most important Russian photoreporters with his “newborn” provincial businessmen, or his real Muscovite businessmen posing as Rodin’s sculptures, in sauna. Sublime watercolors of the young Fine Arts student in Paris, of Nicolas Tolmachev, who easily couples the beautiful eighteen years old girl and the beast extraterrestrial. The official portraits of Coco Chanel and Marlene Dietrich, seized by the very famous 30’s photographer Roger Schall, presenting them as they were – icons of style – are close to the ironic artwork and the end of the Japanese Shunsuke Ohno, who resumes the clichés of fashion, rephotographing them in another light and reframing them, thus modifying the balance of the initial image and its message. And the video work of Laurent Fievet, a montage from a small classic Hollywood film sequence, somewhere halfway between the admiration for the such smooth constructions beauty and the discreet irony in front of the guns of a product. On the photographs of Katerina Belkina, winner of the last Hasselblad Masters prize, we immerse ourselves in the beautiful coldness of the Flemish masters and their classical composition (elegance assured!), which serves as a form to talk about the daily life of a modern woman. In contrast to these purified clichés, the Lithuanians of the Soviet era by Antanas Sutkus, keep their elegant dignity in all circumstances, wearing it as a resistance to the regime. A small step back in time – and here are the remnants of this same regime: the sculptures, once omnipresent, are degraded under the lens of Igor Moukhin, who manages to capture what is left of this famous winners pride. Who converses with the muscular, living, and sculptural bodies of Mariinsky dancers, by Evgeny Mokhorev, who in these classical poses explain the basics of ballet (which was, in its early days, exclusively male). The simplicity of their gestures rhymes with the purity of Vadim Gushchin’s arranged books, whose music of dust we almost can hear. Timeless Book that every Russian recalls with the famous sentence of Bulgakov: “the manuscripts do not burn”,– unlocks the door to eternity, that some artists treat as urgent modernity. Oleg DOU, and his portrait-masks of beauty, irreproachable and without soul. Olga Fedorova, author of the synthetic worlds, imaginary fruits, observations and dreams. Or Dmitry Sokolenko, as a mathematician poet, condenses the universe into semantic fields, into images. Paris Hilton, the icon of anti-elegance, is summarized in two semicircles, quite elegant... The lines that join the curves of the nudes of Anna Danilova and landscapes of Ilan Weiss.
Thus, our exhibition is willing to talk about elegance, different subjects, artworks, but also about the elegance of artist’s gesture, who reframes the Cosmos, cuts useless and vain, and tries to approach the ultimate elegance - immortality ...
