by Elena Rubinova
Boris Bernaskoni and Elena Filaretova
Suggestive Magic
Charles Baudelaire, the forefather of modern art criticism, defined “pure art” as “une magie suggestive contenant à la fois l’objet et le sujet, le monde extérieur à l’artiste lui-même” (a suggestive magic containing at once the object and subject, the external world to the artist himself). I am not sure whether the young St Petersburg artist Elena Filaretova reflected on this particular definition, but her strange suggestive paintings, combining figurative and abstract style, invite viewers to fully engage in games of the mind and imagination. If one wants to understand what “art for art's sake” would look like nowadays – a realm of creation that has been cleansed of social connotations and topical issues of the day – Elena Filaretova's first solo show entitled “R&D Filaretova” (in Russian “NII Filaretova”) is a clear confirmation that this is possible. Her painting resonates with the aggregate states of the psyche and perception of a modern man, who catches everything on the run, busy and inattentive to the point of half-erased consciousness, unable to focus for long on the landscape or people. Interpreting a vague unclear visual image, the human brain completes it and is often deceived – this is how the pareidolia effect occurs, when we see faces or outlines of familiar objects in patterns, spots, blots, or clouds. In other words, when it comes to an image, the viewer sees the central part more clearly, while the edges remain blurred.
Elena Filaretova in her studio, Photo courtesy of Motya Shevarinha
“The ambiguity, which I create by using light, shadow and colour to form a figure or face, encourages the viewer to think. The elements and puzzles in the work cause a kind of resistance and subsequently a sense of curiosity in the viewer. They make the viewer become fascinated and see every detail to the smallest nuance on their own," the artist explains.
The Portrait series, which occupies the entire ground floor of the exhibition, is of real people, but their features are just beginning to emerge and be guessed. "The series began in 2018, and for a few years my primary focus was on portraits. First, on self-portraits, then I switched to friends and acquaintances, and at a certain stage there were so many portraits that they covered the walls of the studio. Once one of the guests started naming the people depicted: mostly all of them knew each other in life. I realized that intuitively my search had worked,” Elena continues. Picking up the internet trend of recent years and reflecting on the uncertainty of the image, she also paints “liminal spaces”– eerie deserted rooms and corridors, visible as if through a veil in front of one’s eyes. The artworks of the other two series, “Forest” and “Garden”, are background abstractions with swirling internal colour flows, in which the presence of the unknown is felt: you notice with a side-eye that someone is looking at you from the paintings.
Works from the series Liminal Spaces
The hall with the series Liminal Spaces
Works from the series Forest
The hall with the series Forest
Works from the series Garden
The hall with the series Garden
The exhibition featuring more than 170 works created from 2019 to 2024 was on view in May-June at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. However, its success was not only due to the aesthetically self-sufficient and organic nature of her paintings; to no small extent the credit should also go to Boris Bernaskoni, the curator and architect of the exhibition, who went far beyond the usual role. He claims that his own involvement in the project shifted and is closer to moderating rather than curating.
“Form follows information”
Bernaskoni (and his bureau under the same name), whose impressive portfolio includes co-operation with Grisha Bruskin and Oleg Kulik and the design of Kandinsky Prize exhibitions, transformed the museum halls into the offices of a research institute, where students of the Higher School of Economics (HSE) Art and Design School study the audience's perception of contemporary art and create new objects. “Collaboration”, as such, is no new to visual arts, but in the past three decades or so it emerged at the forefront of art trends and debates: in 2003, the Chapman Brothers were nominated for the Turner Prize as a collaborative team; in 2004 Third Text dedicated an entire issue to artistic collaboration and Tate Modern commissioned a workshop, Working Together, that both practically and theoretically explored collaboration in art. Neither new to contemporary art is “total installation”, the term first coined by Ilya Kabakov (1933–2023), following his solo exhibition “Ten Characters” in Feldman Gallery NY in 1988. Ever since the art world entered the era of “total installations”: the term became an integral part of the modern art vocabulary, both locally and internationally. Further elaborating on the two ideas, Bernaskoni came up with the idea of “total collaboration”, giving a new and different twist to the whole concept.
“If the more familiar concept of ‘total installation’ refers to the integration of the work into physical space, our approach includes communication not only with the viewer, but also with other artists, theorists, curators and the space of the site. In addition to integrating the work into information space the artist also checks if he is moving in the right direction. Our exhibition is, of course, a total installation and a total collaboration. The modes of communication have changed, and this is what made ‘total collaboration’ possible", Boris says.
Total installations often took the form of a museum, archive or library - Kabakov started museifying and archiving the Soviet civilization shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union, as if sensing its imminent end. This time, in order to find a practical tool to implement his idea, the curator organised a Research Institute. In particular, as part of the research institute, the exhibition includes both pieces created by students of the HSE Art and Design School in collaboration with the artist, and a parallel programme implying that young curators, graphic artists and illustrators develop projects right inside the exhibition space. On empty laboratory tables designed especially for the exhibition, there were screens and monitors, open books, sketches and design objects created by students based on Filaretova’s works.
Alexander Lartsev, Head of Visual Communications at the HSE Art and Design School says: “For us, Filaretova is a kind of experimental calculating machine in a Soviet research institute. Working in a team, the lab technicians create various forms of contemporary art, which would be impossible for a single artist, and work together on the concept and its embodiment in the art space, in areas such as animation, video art, documentary film, photo project, zine, book, poster, newspaper, clothing, 3D installation, and creation of an interactive performance game.”
The curatorial text states that the exhibition "involves an unlimited number of participants", namely the audience, who are invited to sit down and rest. To take a deep breath. To meditate. This is also a kind of collaboration. The artist provides the viewer with a certain field of research, and the viewer enters into co-operation with the author, as do the other participants in the project. “Why are we doing all this and why is it important? Bernaskoni asks. “With increasing intensity of information flows, an artist or designer can no longer work as they did a hundred years ago. We are practising a new skill – the ability to build multiple information flows and direct them. Of course, the interaction is different –- professional, which implies co-creation of a product, and immersive practice for the viewer.”
The key collaboration of the exhibition was a performance work that Filaretova created in the course of the exhibition. “Above all this is a collaboration between artist and architect, in which the architect becomes the artist and the artist becomes the architect,” Bernaskoni concludes.
Which imaginative and anticipatory practices are at play? What future is becoming apparent here? Why is it appealing to the human eye? Any viewer can pose these questions and has the full right to do so. Whether “total collaboration” becomes mainstream for other artists and curators is yet an open question; however, the one thing critics and enthusiasts alike can agree on is that the dynamic landscape of exhibitions dictates new approaches. In times of total uncertainty, it is even more so.
From the series "Portrait", from the Sarah Vinitz Collection
Meanwhile, as of September 2024, the exhibition is due to take place at the Yeltsin Center in the Ural city of Yekaterinburg and at the National Research University of Electronic Technology (MIET) in Zelenograd outside Moscow, the capital of the Russian electronics industry.
(All photos courtesy of Boris Bernaskoni and Alexei Narodnitsky, unless mentioned otherwise.)
Elena Rubinova is a Moscow-based art journalist working across media, professional philologist, teacher, and translator. She started her career as an English language teacher before joining ABC News as a translator and producer. She has produced documentaries for BBC, National Geographic, Arte, Discovery Channel to name a few, including the three-part series The Art of Russia (BBC2, 2009). She has been a regular contributing writer for Russian magazines and on-line media such as ArtandYou, Artguide, Dialogue of Arts, International Life, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Russia Profile, Passport Moscow.
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