Contributing artists:
Manon Bara, Arthur BONDAR, Aleksey KONDRATYEV, Sergey MAXIMISHIN, Gresham TAPIWA NYAUDE, Margo OVCHARENKO, Philippe TARABELLA, Natasha PODUNOVA, Oleg PONOMAREV, Danila TKACHENKO, Ivan TUZOV, Alice YOFFE, Dunya ZAKHAROVA
The exhibition "UNDER PRESSURE" at the RUSSIANTEAROOM gallery, let 13 artists – photographers and painters – to express themselves on the subject.
Some speak of society pressures, the others propose possible solutions of escape. Some plunge into their private, intimate, hidden situations, the others generalize local or planetary phenomena. This magnifying effect and its movement, from the very tiny one to the global one, is useful for measuring the magnitude of the event, and our place in space-time in relation. Feel concerned or not. Because living under pressure, we all know …
The pressure, I believe, is a notion in which the duality of the world expresses itself best. Pressure can be considered as a positive or negative force, depends on the situation. Its power and nature can either create or destroy.
Remember, strarting from our birth, the pressure accompanies us: we are propelled by our mother belly pressure, and then immediately enveloped by the atmospheric pressure. And our body will support tons of air its his life. As the human being is not just an inert body, but also a brain, its desires and emotions, it is a subject to all sorts of pressures, forced by circumstances.
Sergey Maximishin's photographs are condensed accounts of the Russian condition, but his subjects are not unique to this country. The violence of football fans ("I have never been so scared in my whole life, even in Afghanistan or Chechnya, under fire," says the artist); the scene of Biblical beauty – a soldier and his modest meal on the snowy background of the Chechen front; the raging protester – the pressure can float with explosive calm, or burst us in the face. The characters of Dunya Zakharova, sometimes drawn with a pencil stroke, are fragile and nervous, they seek a protective cocoon, but, alas, are confronted with life and suffer its brutality, in silence, punctuated by the cardiogram.
Gresham Tapiwa Nyauder's paintings contain media pressure in today's Zimbabwean society, Russian Natalia Podunova captures in her photographic portraits hypnotized children in front of TV screens, like zombies, – the two artists talk about the phenomenon and its effect, with different means.
To hide from the buzz of modern society, we are looking for all kinds of remedies. The bodies on Arthur Bondar's photos, half-expelled from the black waves, in the dim light of the fallen day, are fishermen who plunge into the icy water, to celebrate The Epiphany, and get rid of the weight of their sins .
The water that heals and nourishes, but which is also a place for the special therapy – men of the former USSR countries will fish in the frozen waters, to free themselves from daily pressures. It has become a national sport, a hobby and a challenge. The fishermen of Kazakhstan, photographed by Aleksey Kondratyev as ghosts under plastic sheeting, who operate in the extreme cold, cut themselves off from the world, with their supplies on hand, similar to cosmonauts on other planet.
And the hermits of Danila Tkachenko's "Escape" series stand out completely from realities, seeking a life in freedom, without social, political or racial constraints. They give themselves a chance to face life in its pure and hard state, without the artificial pressures of society, escaping for various reasons in the woods. Where man can rely only on himself.
In the very private worlds of Manon Bara and Margo Ovcharenko, the pressure is rising. Margo Ovcharenko's latest photographic work explores the internal and external relationships of female couples. The tension, the attraction, the tenderness create this delicate balance, where the pressure is discreet, but palpable. And in the self-portraits of Manon Bara, the pressure overflows, oozing blood, because the emotion is too strong and untenable.
From the private area, we pass to the encompassing remarks of Ivan Tuzov, Oleg Ponomarev and Alice Yaffe. Oleg Ponomarev's images come from the security scanner of the Saint Petersburg metro. Among the innocuous objects, we find in the bags of passengers things much less commonplace: gas balloons, guns, pistols, cartridges. The pressure is pushing the citizen to seek means of self-defense, to have on hand at all times, to be ready to take a hit. The characters of Ivan Tuzov's pixel art, dead and well-known, are under pressure from ordinary mortals, as Lenin, tired of being disturbed by visitors and the noise of civilization, leaves his mausoleum out of him. And finally, on the gigantic mural of 12 m2 of Alice Yaffe, the mural art, the street art, the caricature, the expressionism - all the styles mix, under the sharp brush of the young painter. The silhouettes are frozen, as blinded by an invisible flash: the meeting secretes international arms dealers is interrupted by the sudden appearance of a terrorist or armed protester. His strained pose is a strange reminder of the murder of the Russian ambassador to Ankara in December 2016, yet the work was created before that date... Premonitory.
Living under constant pressure, today's human has the opportunity to work on this problem, and to cure this evil. But, it seems, he surrounds himself with more gadgets and new sources of anxiety, he gets lost and drowns, helplessly.
When will you leave prison?
