Today at the Museum of Art History (Kunsthistorisches Museum) in Vienna opens exhibition Igor Makarevich and Elena Elagin In Situ, organized by Stella Art Foundation. Curator Prof Vienna University of Applied Arts Boris Manner.

The exhibition reflects the multi-related artists to the famous collection of the museum, located in several rooms where the paintings of old masters from the Northern Renaissance and Jan Vermeer. Exposure Space is not the usual empty «white cube», on the contrary, the artists put their work in the hollows between the already drawn works. Such an approach is the development of iconographic concept of the museum and its commentary. Similar artistic experiment was conducted at the Museum of History of Art at the exhibition of Francis Bacon. One part of the exhibition Makarevich and Elagin enters into a direct roll in the picture «The Tower of Babel» Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Another part is a parallel to otrefleksirovannomu in the painting of Albrecht Durer artist's personality development. Also features artwork from the series «Indoor Fish Exhibition», Homo Lignum, etc.

Boris Manner of authors and Exhibition

In an article published more recently, in the same directory, Elagin Elena and Igor Makarevich called «spirit» of Moscow Conceptualism. In this motion, hiring begins in 70 years and continues to this day, managed to attend almost all the leading Russian artists nonconformists. And we can say that the core of this movement is a group «collective actions», the spiritual leader remains Andrew Monastery . Under the aegis of this movement on the outskirts of Moscow are still held shares, which involve a variety of artists. Elena Elagina and Igor Makarevich - members of the group since 1979. Persecuted common need, a saving in Russia for «undesirable» artists and intellectuals, medial and economic opportunities, not to mention the financial support of artists, creating new social groups, and creative associations, to create their own audiences and their environment. By the mid 70's atelier Igor Igor Makarevich , along with studio Ilya Kabakov , has become a center for alternative and critical aesthetic discourse. It is here, and got acquainted with each other Elena Elagina and Igor Makarevich, operating since 1990 in creative union.

In a joint creative work of Igor Makarevich and Elena Elagin started one after the other born large mythical landscapes, rotating around a common conceptual core, the creation of which was used on an equal basis, almost all artistic means: painting, etching, ready-made , photography, sculpture, which combined all the more brilliantly for the fictitious show their fantastic worlds.

An important feature of the «world's sketches» sight the inclusion of a spectator in the very concept of work. As a result, we, the viewers find themselves in the position of artistic vision. Thus, the works appear to us as phenomena of artistic consciousness, which may be perceived as a quasi-dematerialized, rather than as an object vis-à-vis «other», that is free. This phenomenological attitude Makarevich and Elagin is, of course, and aesthetic inquiry in their work. Individual works are no longer any «material» expression - it is an inherent phenomenon, free from any «real» - physical, historical, or biological - of laws. They appear before us as indifferent and equal ontological phenomena whose veracity is only describing the generation of artists. Earlier laws, whether the historical and artistic, or natural sciences, is losing its force. The use of such a strategy makes accessible to them as material for the full space of creativity - artistic and scientific. And they consistently give their works both artistic and historical paradigm, as well as science and alchemical concepts as forming patterns that are beginning to work only under the phenomenological point of view the artist or the viewer.

This position offers interesting opportunities for the exhibition at the Vienna Museum of Art. As the architectural space and presented «inside» the collection are those for the tandem of artists «inherent», that is equivalent, their art will focus on the whole of the symbolic object. Museum halls are perceived not as a space for the phenomenon of art objects, not as a «large real» of these objects, but as an equivalent of the aesthetic field. For the same reason the rooms are not exempt from other works, to serve the phenomenon of Elagin Makarevich and as a white cube. Artists build their installations and paintings in the empty space between the pieces are already available in the room. In doing so, they are complementary and are already an existing script, not destroying it. Through various strategies of representation raises delicate relationship between the «old» and «new» art.

Thematic central concept in the works and Elagin Makarevich is the notion of «transformation». Both artists create sketches of heroes, who then become his life in a symbolic space, and living situations, which are drawn from mythology and history. Elagina introduces a real historical figure of Olga Lepeshinskiy - biologist, at the time of Stalin's dictatorship, said that could extend human life. Its too strong for a dream, which did not rest even in such oriental alchemists, as he Trismozin. Makarevich, on the other hand, runs the Pinocchio - Pinocchio of the Russian - in the classic works of art, such as «Abduction Ganimedov» work by Rembrandt and Georges marriage allows him to serve as Vice-artist and the viewer to participate in the entire history of art. With its diverse, dizzying, literally hallucinogenic concepts artists seeking «mute» our usual audience look and thereby create conditions for free, reflexive treatment works as well with our own unconscious and nerefleksivnym term of art.

The exhibition is open to the public from 19 May to 4 August, 2009.

Source: press release Stella Art Foundation, safmuseum.org