SISTEMA GALLERY took part in the 11th International Contemporary Art Fair Cosmoscow 2023, which was held in the “Forum” pavilion of the Central Exhibition Facility “Expocentre” in Moscow from 29 Sep to 1 Oct 2023. Stand number B7.

The artists: Alina Kugush, samuill marshak, Misha Most, Sasha Puchkova.

The stand of the gallery was divided into two parts, which were dedicated to two artists. The first side presented a series of paintings and objects by samuill marshak, which was part of the artist’s solo exhibition “TA-TA-TA” at the gallery in 2023.

On the other side there was a new series of paintings and drawings by Alina Kugush from the project “Atlas of Emergency Situations (AES)”, which was specially designed for the fair. Graphic sheets by Sasha Puchkova from different series were also presented there, including those from the artist’s solo exhibition “Something is wrong with this kingdom” at the gallery in 2023.

Cosmoscow Website

ALINA KUGUSH

The ‘Atlas of Emergency Situations (AES)’ series of paintings and graphics is a set of mystical, broken locations and worlds with places and characters that are not individually suspect, but collectively form a picture of a shifting, mutated world.

Abandoned Soviet science centres, ideal for the emergence of public conspiracy theories around them. Characters who have fallen out of their time. Animals that have lost their properties and are frozen between the world of the living and the inanimate.

The “Fiché” (fr. — nailed) series is a catalogue of small 25×25 cm watercolour sheets with portraits of butterfly people. Each work is framed like an entomological collection. 

A cartouche of humanoid chimeras, human faces with butterfly wings. The unpredictability of the fluid watercolour gives birth to a certain kind of asymmetry in these creatures, alluding to the main metaphor of the stand – fragile and, perhaps, broken. In any case, they are all accounted for and filed.

samuill marshak

In the project “TA-TA-TA” explores how perception and memory function in a volatile situation. The desire to find sustenance leads the mind to simple pleasures, which the artist depicts in the form of basic pleasant images familiar since childhood: home, sky, grass, flowers, rainbows, cake and more. The objects are portrayed enlarged, and this emphasises a focus of attention, a deliberate selectivity of vision. The large candy-coloured canvases of this series are ‘facades’ of perception, covering undesirable realities. Anything unpleasant rolls down the “forgetting curve” and smears out. This autistic state, by the artist, is one of withdrawal and displacement of the dangerous world around us. Yet in the naïve manner of this painting series, in its artistic “irregularity” and incompleteness, there remains a sense of unease that these sets conceal.

MISHA MOST

Man has always tried to look into the future. With the development of technological progress since the 1960s, our idea of the future has also changed. People have been trying to imagine it throughout the twentieth century, but now with the rapid development of the latest technologies, we are already, in fact, living in it. We stopped romanticizing and dreaming about him, a person’s attitude to the future has changed, the expectations associated with him, his image is not as sublime and hopeful as before. The future has become more utilitarian. We are approaching the time when artificial intelligence will increasingly replace the real one. Perhaps very soon, even in museums, works created not by a man, but by a robot will be shown.

Misha Most, 2017

The presented project is a kind of reflection on the evolution, progress or regression of humanity in general and the individual in particular. Bright visual images are supplemented with theories and hypotheses of scientists of the 60s and 70s of the XX century about the near future, including our present, regarding both changes in the social system and psycho-physiological features of homo sapiens.

SASHA PUCHKOVA

Sasha Puchkova’s “Kingdom” combines fantasy images of the Middle Ages and modern times, if earlier their source was biblical stories, now it is mass culture. The artist refers to the characters whose appearance or temper is not fully described, therefore they are open to interpretation. It is known that the discrepancies in the images of creatures and some phenomena of Christian scriptures are present. These discrepancies can be found in Catholic medieval book miniatures. The interpretations of monk artists gave rise to pagan monsters with stars and eyes on the body or mystical images of plots, an example is the work of the 12th-century nun Hildegard of Bingen.

The fabulousness of the Middle Ages has become a source of ideas and images for modern visual culture – films, series, cartoons, video games in the fantasy and science fiction genre. Therefore, Sasha Puchkova’s “medieval” engravings feature characters that we are already accustomed to seeing from the screens: Maleficent, Snow White, even the princess from the game “Mario Brothers” and other popular heroes. Sasha Puchkova also interprets the characters of our time, mostly female, in her own way, transforming not only the appearance, but also the character, giving them more individuality: each “evil” heroine has her own backstory. This is a kind of fanfiction, the destruction of stereotypes. In general, this is a new trend: to rethink old stories in the ethics of the 21st century with the priority of the values of the individual and his characteristics. Combining the images of different eras, the artist shows the equivalence and simultaneity of their existence in modern culture and our consciousness, their transformation and adaptation – so the “inhabitants of the kingdom” may well be Snow White – Super Sonic or Fire Serpent – Goofy.

Frame-objects are also multi-valued and give the works an additional dimension. On the one hand, the shapes of the frames refer to Catholic altars and frames of manuscripts, on the other hand, they wrap around the engravings like extraterrestrial beings, reminiscent of science fiction films. Such confusion, symbolism, inherent in mass culture, is compared with medieval folk thinking, and our time, including for this reason, is called the “new Middle Ages”.