the Mode of self-isolation begin to shoot, but to the normal rhythm of life is still far away (and if we’ll ever return to it?). These months for many was a time of immersion in themselves – as in the deep ocean. Artists are also swimming in it all my professional life: privacy part of their working practice. Each – your ocean. Today about creative ways to dive in myself in the framework of the project “Art of Life” talk with Tatyana Sherstyuk – a conceptual artist, an author of unusual total installations, which often cast doubt on the reality of the situation.
Our world is deceptive. Often the familiar and obvious in fact has a quite different. Biography of Tatyana Sherstyuk – proof. For example, there is a stereotype that models are stupid. If beautiful, means, in a head wind. But no. Tanya is a tall, slender beauty with a MOP of blond hair – once conquered the fashion runway, and then with the same ease the maiden ascended the podium of modern art. She has several entities: the faculty of applied art of MGTU. Kosygin, post-graduate course at new York’s Parsons School of Design, Institute of Television and Radio broadcasting Ostankino and the Institute of contemporary art. She speaks fluent English and teaches French. Her projects are successfully displayed in Russia and outside the country.
Owls are not what they seem. This nonlinear pattern can be traced in the life and work Sherstyuk. By the way, she even had an exhibition at “Gallery 21” at the Winery with the same name – a phrase that has become iconic thanks to the TV series “twin Peaks”. The project, created in collaboration with legendary conceptual artist Viktor Skersis, it happened a strange transformation: for example, Venus was turned into a hare, who – in duck… Light installation was rhymed with the voices of authors coming out of nowhere and addressed to nowhere. In art there are no accidents, and in the concept – every part contains a semantic connotation.
In the project “72 turns around the one and only”, which was carried out shortly before the collapse of the old world, Tanya explored the rituals of love spell. Each had experienced and reflected on the video, one self-sufficient aesthetics of the picture. But more importantly – the more examples the most mystical and strange, almost medieval rituals, and evidence of their actual impact on the object, the more non-obvious fact: the two halves is a myth. Man is whole, not a fragmentation of identity, and even the search for love is a manifestation of the self.
Each project Tanya, like a true conceptualist, long thinks. Working in his Studio apartment in the center of Moscow, where and isolated themselves for the duration of the quarantine. And we came up with several new projects. About how ideas are born poda��of ilas with “MK”.
– What is your personal creativity zone? What a space, its mood, the drink? Does it matter the size, wall color, window view, the absence (or presence of) extended attributes (maybe books)?
– At different times there were different workshops. Of great importance and the amount of light in this space, and the view from the window, and the Studio itself. Now in my Studio with high ceilings, white walls, French balcony with window to the floor, many books, easel, cushion for work on the floor. And, of course, a lot of canvases and paints. A critical prerequisite for the job, oddly enough, is the shower. Of course, he was not in the workshop. But to think of ideas it is absolutely necessary. In one of the stories of the science fiction writer Robert Sheckley, whose compositions I have fond childhood, to the heroes of the story the most interesting ideas came up while they were looking at a dog, so my ideas are often born in the shower. Before you begin any project, I am considering it for several months and I write a lot. But solutions do not come at the time of writing, and later, accidentally, but often under water. And drink or the lack of it are irrelevant. The other necessary condition for work is the music. It can be very different from the organ toccatas Bach to techno.
is it Important for you loneliness while working in the Studio? Can you work, if there is someone else?
Yes, it is important to be one. And it is important that no one is distracted. Sometimes I want to show what happens to a loved one, but for this I specially called.
How long can you stay in the Studio alone? A few days, weeks, months and not go in white light?
– No more than one day. I year can work on the same project, but to go out, walking, seeing new things, share ideas. All this is necessary. Working from the comfort of the Studio very difficult. Although all happened. Remember, in the Institute before the session, I and my College friends a few weeks without a break to finish work to hang. “Hanging” we called the student exhibition, which shows the examination papers. Had so many things that we wrote day and night without stopping, and paintings were everywhere: on tables, walls, easels, floors. These days we from them do not come off, I remember that I even fell asleep on his drawings. And in one of these sessions, I went beyond the Institute’s painting traditions. We loved everything Buffy, Nazarite, and I was fascinated by Impressionists, open the bright flowers, and made a series of bright pink and blue still lifes. Which, of course, looked like a riot. The exam Board, otsmatrivali Rasescu, unanimously gave me a C in art but just an hour into the show came the Dean of the faculty, and, contrary to the decision of the Commission, I corrected the two for a fiver.
– How important is it for you food, when creativity much rushing? Do you have your recipes to fuel creative activity.
– Sometimes about food completely forget, but when I do during work, you need to have it, preferably immediately. Special recipes no. Except to sleep, drink coffee and have a good Breakfast. I do not understand people who do not eat Breakfast, but the evening eat an elephant. I have elephants exclusively for Breakfast.
– it is said that many artists work in “altered state”? Is it for you? What helps you sink into it?
– As a rule, in a state of altered consciousness where I work. In order for him to take, I simply do not sleep.
People in order to live in the apartment for a few months needs to buy food. And what should be in your workshop for two months in addition to the products? Specifically – what materials?
– it depends on the project I’m doing. When many months I worked to create a total installation, “Hic Sunt Dracones” (in Russian “Here live dragons”), which consisted entirely of shadow projections, I needed a computer and a projector. When I wrote picturesque series “the Leftovers” for a couple of months left around ten large-scale canvases and thirty Dutch of acrylic tubes.
– what, in your opinion, mass self-isolation will change our world? Will affect the consciousness of the artist and the viewer? How to affect the culture?
Visual art is directly associated with space, its perception and work in it. Artwork live differently in different spaces, and in samosoglasovannogo the virtual world of galleries and museums it is difficult to feel the art. It’s like that to read the description of the taste of the Apple, not eat it. I think that after the period of isolation the world is just gonna be the same, although, of course, will change the aesthetics, which can not affect the culture. Some minor changes can be predicted now, like the widespread wearing of medical masks, which will affect fashion, and continuing to change the rituals of greetings such as a handshake that subsequently lead to the change of cultural codes. But there will be unpredictable metamorphoses, like those that happen in dreams. In the dream everything seems to be as always, you and the mirror in which you look but costs a little to turn his head, and suddenly find yourself at the back of the second nose. It would seem a trifle, but a little familiar.
