🗓️January 23-27, 2013
YOUTH CENTER AT THE STATE HERMITAGE MUSEUM
Main Headquarters Building
📍45 Moyka River Embankment, 3rd Fl, St Petersburg 191186 Russia
◆Simple Rules◆
From private collections of St. Petersburg art collectors
Curator: Leonid Frants
🎨 Artists: Nikolai Akimov, Aleksandr Arefiev, Aleksandr Baturin, Viktor Burtas, Richard Vasmi, Solomon Gershov, Yevgenia Gorokhova, Valentin Gromov, Rodion Gudzenko, Nikolai Zhukov, Anatoly Zaslavsky, Iosif Zisman, Igor Ivanov, Anatoly Kaplan, Aleksandr Kozhin, Pavel Kondratiev, Boris Koshelokhov, Ludmila Kutsenko, Valentin Levitin, Yevgeny Mikhnov-Voitenko, Gerta Nemenova, Leon Nissenbaum, Valentina Povarova, Valeriy Rabchinsky, Solomon Rossin, Ivan Sotnikov, Vladimir Sterligov, Gennady Ustugov, Vladimir Shagin, Sholom Shvarts, Boris Ender, Vladimir Yashke.
Charitable Foundation St Petersburg Arts Project (NY),
Kolodzei Art Foundation (NY)
With the support of CYLAND Media Art Lab
Within the scope of the project “Cutting-Edge Art of St. Petersburg. A Retrospective”.
01.23.2013 🕒18.00 Opening of the exhibition.
First showing of the documentary “Richard Vasmi” from the project of Tatiana and Natalia Kolodzei “Reflections on Art”. St. Petersburg, 1997. © Kolodzei Art Foundation
01.24.2013 🕒6.30 PM – Meeting with the art collector Boris Faizullin
01.26.2013 🕒4.00 PM – Round table discussion with the collectors Galina Chudnovskaya, Boris Faizullin, Aleksey Rodionov, Sofia Kudryavtseva, Leonid Frants.
Rooms of the Youth Center at the General Staff Building.
Third Floor.
Admission free.
Simple Rules
It is impossible to tell an objective story about the time past. Now our memory plays tricks by a random selection of moments, now people around us redefine them for us and start believing that this is indeed how it was. Only the Things, that have remained, do not lie. They did not change their opinion, nor did they succumb to anyone’s urging; they stay exactly the same as they were when somebody “invited” them to their home by making them part of their collection.
Let’s call this “simple rules”, a thread that ties up a collector with his collection; the rules that leave no room for deception and, with time, show the reality the way it was back in the day. Collectors become “time keepers”, accumulators of eternity and of soul particles of those who opted for the materially “senseless”, in any event, in the Leningrad of those years.
The voice of all the artists resonates in their art. It could be tremulous like that of Sholom Shvarts who feels lost, much like his little fellows. Or it could be the harsh, laconic and self-assured voice of Richard Vasmi.
Valentin Gromov, the last survivor of the Arefiev circle, much like Vladimir Shagin, speaks the language of color. Valentin Vladimirovich: “Why did you splash it with white lead?! White color, you do need to look for it…!”
The accident speaks for Leon Bogdanov – a drop of color that fell on the wet paper.
Mikhnov-Voitenko seizes power over the running ink and constructs a special work table that obeys the movement of his hand.
Valentina Petrovna Povarova… her course of color studies in the Mukhina Academy was such a miracle! One runs in the morning under the skies of lead and wet snow and gets straight from the aquatint to Valentina Petrovna! It is as if one touches a rainbow…
I was not fortunate to study with Ludmila Viktorovna Kutsenko; I only remember the overheard phrase about the “tension of color”. Much later, her works ended up in our collection. Oh, how magical it sounds: the “tension of color”…
Gennady Ustugov, Rodion Gudzenko, Valentin Levitin… listen to their voices.
All of them have their own simple rules.