🗓️September 1, 2015, 18:30
YOUTH CENTER OF THE STATE HERMITAGE MUSEUM
📍47, Moyka River Emb, St. Peterburg 191186 Russia
◆Performance by Ivan Govorkov and Alexey Grachev “Models of the Mind”
Installation by Ivan Govorkov and Elena Gubanova “Eclipse”◆
The performance by Ivan Govorkov and Alexey Grachev is, above all, a dialogue between artistic generations: Ivan Govorkov is a professor, an academician, a virtuoso draftsman who handles his medium with ease and freedom. The question raised by the artists in this work is highly relevant to contemporary artistic practices: to what extent is it possible to integrate technology into traditional art?
Ivan Govorkov begins his drawing without a prior concept, almost with his eyes closed. What we see is neither a sketch nor a painting: these are graphic improvisations. For an academically trained artist, they are a natural form of expression. The automatic writing of the Surrealists, the geste gratuit of the Dadaists, and the spontaneous techniques invented under their influence are, today, little more than artistic construction sets. It turns out that by relinquishing control—drawing blindly, without any preconceived plan—the artist does not attain freedom, but instead confronts its illusory nature. In this act of pleasure and perceived freedom lies a degree of habit, skill, and predictability.
This is precisely what Alexey Grachev takes up. Using software, computer modeling, a modern scanner, and a 3D printer, he transforms the artist’s spontaneous two-dimensional drawing into a three-dimensional form. By adding virtual reality to pencil lines, Alexey Grachev creates an entirely new artistic object in real space. In this new sculpture, nothing remains of the original drawing—perhaps only its expressiveness. And in the end, each participant in this dialogue remains firmly on his own ground.