ORELART PARIS Art Contemporain Russe et International

With:
Dubossarsky & Vinogradov
Andrei Molodkin
Yuri Shabelnikov
Valéry Koshlyakov
Arsen Savadov
Sergey Shekhovtsov
Alexander et Marina Royzman
Marian Chernikova
Dimitry Fain & Ivan Razumov
Stephen J. Shanabrook
Rupert Shrive
Raffaella Nappo

The exhibition "East / West" gathers a selection of Russian and international artists (Italy, Great Britain, the USA) having jointly an artistic reflection based on the handing-over in question of the contemporary society as well as the deconstruction of our cultural references. From their experiments and their own past, they emphasize in their works the report of the loss of rationality of the current society.
Mirror of the troubles as well cultural as social of our time, "East/West" is at the same time a meeting and a dialogue between different artistic glances, pertaining to two historically distinct geographical spaces: in the East, several decades of cultural amnesia have affected the Russian artists, obliging them to operate a second reading of their references through those of the Western world; in the West, the general state of aggressiveness raises interrogations related to new codes, such as for example the culture of "ego" and the money.

The most representative project of this cultural questioning is that of Andrei Molodkin. By creating acrylic resin sculptures filled of black gold, he aims at uncovering the "export of the democracy in the name of oil". He denounces the mass culture thus, the reign of the dollars and oil in the world.
In the same spirit, by his overhung "Throne" of two safety video cameras, sculpted in foam, Sergey Shekhovtsov stresses rivalry/friendship between the East and the West. This symbol of the capacity, empty moreover, at the same time solid and fragile, reveals its obsolete and faddish nature in a world where the change is omnipresent. Who will seize the power?
Virulence, irony, cynicism are the usual weapons in the plastic rhetoric of Arsen Savadov. He disguises and transgresses his subjects for better pickling with the acid the persistent stereotypes of the ex-USSR, still present in the mind of the capitalist world as in that of the current Russian people. With through "Collective Red II", he immortalises in portraits of family his personages, placed under the influence of nostalgia, certainly major, but demystified, of the strong symbols of Communism. The red dominates, impudence too.

The construction of a cultural identity passes, apart from the representation of the political power, by the completed and current places of life, which are the figures of a common History. Basing herself on documentary images of cities, Marina Chernikova proposes a new vision of the Megalopolis. She links in only one representation various visual fragments in order to create her own virtual agglomeration. She thus reveals the conflict between the perception of an image, the memory and its representation.
Valery Koshlyakov tries, as for him, to reproduce what had been created before, but which, in his opinion, was lost in the new assets of the culture. By confronting the Saint-Jacques Tower, recently restored, to public dustbins, his approach tends to point finger the ruin of the values of the current society.

Another place, that of the differently popular symbol of the football field, is the central subject of a creation of Yuri Shabelnikov as a warlike space between nationalities.

Another prospect of the exhibition falls under the representation of human, its image. The last project of Stephen J. Shanabrook consists in dissolving celebrities’ dolls, support of certain idolatry, so that the plastic of which they are made melts into horrifying squashed objects. He confronts two obsessions of the contemporary society thus: the statute of the celebrity and death. He also shows how an object of attraction can easily change: starting from its sublimation, the inaccessible object of admiration or desire can then be perceived like a deformed object causing unease and worry.
On his side, Rupert Shrive rearranges gouaches on paper, visual anagrams, changing the physical grammar of familiar in order to indicate the hidden significance of it. It acts of a three stages process: creation, destruction and re-creation of the being.
Raffaella Nappo, as for her, points at the being in itself, which disappears to reappear only with its attributes. Her carbon fibre gloves then become the box of dematerialised bodies. By giving again life and movement with the objects frozen in one eternal moment, this work underlines the fact that we are at the hands of the absence of a human interpreter.
The famous duet V. Dubossarsky & A. Vinogradov, whose projects are based on the re-use of Sots art (Russian version of Pop' art), will not derogate from this collective presentation. They will present a new artwork, faithful to their néo-pompier style’s compositions, integrating the commonplaces of Soviet realism and the codes of the consumer society.

By brewing universal subjects of reflection, varied media, this event wants to be also revealing of a recent course of action of the Gallery, which aims at extending its sphere of activity to artists of various nationalities. This meeting will be also the occasion to observe the position of Russian contemporary creation.