Night Barnaul

 
 

Komsomol Truth

 

Not for the faint hearted

Not for the faint hearted. That’s how the new controversial show of Alexei Biryukoff and Dmitriy Onischenko Naked Loneliness can be characterized. This show triggered interest and anticipation of the Barnaul art community.
-When shall we see a real performance? - the advanced young people wondered. – So your time has come.
Finally we shall witness the creative expression of young free thinking, untamed artists, who know no fear in front of the public judgment. But performance is a temporary ephemeral event. The lasting carriers of the content are and will be the works of the artists. What are they like?
The size of the depicted motifs that earlier (in our consciousness) had right only for chamber, intimate existence, delivers spectators into shock.
The manipulation with the models is easy and reminds of playing with dolls, although these dolls are huge; 
the dissonance of broken proportions along with the visual striving to realism quite impresses. Let us admit that this is a specially applied trick, which makes the dissonance an expressive means. Close up details – toes, foreskin – all that usually stays at the peripheral sight of artists – now is the center of attention. This paradoxical hypertrophied flesh – irony in the address of the new hedonism, that lives in minds today.

It s not just naked loneliness, it is a prepared loneliness in the microscope. Talking about the motif of loneliness, let us take an immodest look at the nudes. How the artistic vision of beauty has changed, fans of classicism would sigh. Where is the ideal, where are the models for imitation? Alas, such beauty is impossible in the modern world. Mechanically transferred from the past it would be fake and dishonest. And these nudes built on breaking of the laws of harmony are much closer to the realia of the present time. It is a natural product of contemporary art. Here the strive to free human instincts is clearly seen, an experiment with the spectators’ perception and possible limits of art (within Barnaul), where art becomes an open system, free of barriers, where we have the beginning but cannot foresee an end, where the main expected result is interactivity and a happening. We can only wish good luck to the young artists, because we anticipate seeing  the result too.

What the artists really have managed to do is to avoid vulgar images of the yellow press. Sugary and false beauty have not aggravated these works, that is what I really want to thank the artists for. Also they have managed to refresh the weary perception. Although the psychic experience happens to be opposite to purifying tears, but that is a sign of our time too. Reality is constantly surpassing art. And for Alexei Biryukoff and Dmitriy Onischenko the main thing in art is the absence of artificiality in it.

Lidia Lisenko