Sergey Shutov
TERRATHERAPY OF RORSCHACH

(paintings, graphics)

03. 06. 10 - 04. 07. 10

Opening reception - June, 3-rd at 6 p.m.

A. Petrovichev And who, pray, is Rorschach?

S. Shutov Hermann Rorschach was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. In 1921 he offered a psychodiagnostic personality test that came to be known from his name as the Rorschach inkblot test. It is one of the tests used in personality and its disorder studies. A person undergoing that test is asked to interpret ten inkblots placed symmetrically in relation to a vertical axis. Every such figure prompts free associations, and the person under test should give any word, image or idea that comes to his or her mind. According to this test, personal characteristics determine what any individual sees in an inkblot. In such projective methods the test material is organized in a special way to study the personality as a whole and its individual aspects.
These methods are based on the projection mechanism, which was first discovered by Sigmund Freud and described as a process of ascribing one's unacceptable feelings and desires to an object without. Such projection is unconscious and has a protective function by easing the contradiction between man's real (unconscious) aspirations and social norms, assessments and conscious convictions. The latter account for the constitutional, which presupposes structuring the given stimuli and giving them some meaning (the Rorschach inkblot test, terratherapy)
The offered version makes it possible to establish a link between a graphical picture of a country and a percipient lover of geography. For instance, a representation of the southern part of a northern country in its north, south, east or west can have a beneficial effect on the health of its population. Or else terratherapy can be applied to industry by showing the industrially developed north on the map of the country's south. Let me cite a simple example: if the Crimea - the national health resort - had been placed in the north, south, east and west of the Soviet map, our national history would have been different.

A. Petrovichev I wish we were in the national health resort of the Crimea now. Pity it's on the other side of the axis at the moment. As for your exhibition, what was it prompted by?

S. Shutov Now that the idea of the State has exhausted itself, the fact is causing numerous neuroses and psychopathic reactions. My task is to mollify and offer therapy to the frustrated section of society. Maps as a conventionally truthful representation of the country are a perfect instrument. Distorted longitudes along the meridians, distance distortion along the parallels, distorted angles and map shapes make it possible to use cartography as an instrument of psychotherapy. And finally, the Rorschach inkblot test can be seen as a medical community response to the explosive development of artistic practice of the period.

A. Petrovichev I can't agree with your statement that the idea of the State has been exhausted. Rather lack of ideas on the part of the State has led to a deadlock. The appearance of an idea will put an end to frustrations. I wonder what caused that 'medical community response to the explosive development of artistic practice' in the period you did not specify.

S. Shutov I mean the 1920s and the 1930s when modernism and psychoanalysis triumphed as a result of the ideological and cultural discoveries between 1910 and 1920.

A. Petrovichev Do you want to say that now the artistic community has eagerly embraced methods of the medical community?

S. Shutov Artistic technologies willingly draw on medical technologies and vice versa. A member of the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) and a training and supervising analyst of the Moscow Society of Psychoanalysts have used my work of 1979 with equal success. For example, in 1996 I staged an exhibition named Medicinal Art.

A. Petrovichev The name of the current exhibition comprises the word terratherapy. Everything is clear about therapy, but what about terra?

S. Shutov Earth has traditionally been one of the oldest medicinal agents. Soils are used in cosmetology, medicine and so on. .

A. Petrovichev As I see it, the key to understanding the unusual maps of 'medicinal' geography shown at this exhibition is somewhere near, isn't it?

S. Shutov A national map picture has long become a symbol. Everybody knows about the boot-shape peninsula of Italy. And everybody knows about the problems of the north and the south of this beautiful country. I suggest that modified representations of the country be used to soften the mores of the especially frustrated section of the population. For those who are fond of the south the southern part of the country can be placed in the north, south, east and west in order to get an 'ideal' picture of the country. Island countries of the wonderful Avallon in the ocean of base human passions.

PHOTOS OF THE EXPOSITION

Vladimir Nasedkin

TRANSIT
(paintings)

25. 03. 10 - 25. 04. 10

Opening reception March, 25 at 6 p.m.

Nowadays we travel thank to INTERNET without leaving our place and we overcome the distances, which we've dreamed about. Travelling via hyperlinks through the landscapes of the World Wide Web is an imitation of a trip, but this is our today's reality.

First impressions of a trip in one or another country I get in the program Google Earth, where I can make satellite photos of the most expressive and interesting landscapes from each altitude I desire. Afterwards I get impressions and emotions directly at the place, where I travel in reality, to create my pictures with the local different colored grounds.

Drawing the geographical and geometrical elements of maps, I try to decipher the landscapes and to evaluate them aesthetically. It's a kind of cultural geography and new urbanistics, where the plan of the city appears as a social and cultural text. This change of perspective and the feeling, that you can touch the sky, discover new visions of space, about what I've never known before, while standing on the Earth. A virtual image together with the reality of the PLACE gives birth to a new truth - THE TRUTH OF ART.

Google Earth. Norway. Airport of Bergen. 2008-09, È.Í., 130È150 ÓÍ

Four Answers of VLADIMIR NASEDKIN
to Alexander Petrovichev's Questions

A. Petrovichev It is your fourth exhibition at the Krokin Gallery. In this case it is called Transit. What is it about?

V. Nasedkin I travel a lot, and a couple of years ago those trips of mine acquired a special, I can say, additional meaning. As an artist I have formulated a sort of program for myself, which on the whole is quite simple. Before flying or going somewhere, I check out Google Earth on the Internet and scrupulously study my future destination. The Internet makes it possible today to travel without leaving one's home and to visit places that we have not even dreamed about. I am aware that following hyperlinks across the expanses of the worldwide net is, of course, merely imitation traveling, but such is the reality of our day. I get the first impressions of the projected trip precisely from Google Earth, where I can take the satellite down to the desired height and photograph the topography and layouts of all sorts of industrial zones, airports and cities and towns that I find expressive and interesting to me. Much later there come other impressions and emotions directly from the place, which I visit in reality and where I make my pictures using variegated sands and earth of precisely that locality.

A. Petrovichev You actively use the words 'geometry' and 'geography,' which share the common root 'geo' meaning earth, in your vocabulary. Does verbality have a certain meaning for you as a contemporary artist?

V. Nasedkin In this case geography is but a multifarious directory of my project. At first glance - be it on the display or through a plane porthole - the selected territories are seen as geometrical abstraction, even though they are in fact absolutely concrete documental landscapes. As for geometry, it is always present wherever there is man. It is the geometry of roads, airports, industrial zones, construction sites and bedroom communities. It inspires me and perfectly fits the system of my art and its key stylistic principles, adding special meaning to pure abstraction. So no one will now accuse me of formalism - they are landscapes from a bird's-eye view! Of course, I'm not original here, but what matters to me is to be consistent and systemic rather than original.

Google Earth. Norway. Airport of Bergen. 2008-09, È.Í., 130È150 ÓÍ

A. Petrovichev I think what you do looks not so much as painting, but rather as paving - like paving roads with the help of earth, sand and pebbles. This makes your works visually and physically heavy. And in these paved canvases you gradually abandon pure geometrical abstraction in favor of meticulous documentation of reality. When did you start using those grounds, sands and earth, which are so uncharacteristic of traditional techniques?

V. Nasedkin There is nothing new about the use of ground, sand, etc. I was no discoverer. Many have poured a lot of substances onto canvas before me, Picasso, for instance. I did the first works of that type in 1988, when I came to Armenia. I was fascinated to see Armenians visiting their temples cross themselves and touch the stone wall with their hands. I was very much impressed by the importance of that physical tactility. On that occasion I brought five kilos of earth from Armenia. Then I brought earth from Tibet, Nepal, and that set the ball rolling. Practically, wherever I go I bring back earth or sand. I never cheat. For instance, canvases made in Norway are so dark because I used local sand from the fjords to make them. I am quite conceptual about it. It has become a fundamental component of my art. I see in it something unresolved and vague, yet having special meaning and importance. Natural color and texture have replaced color scheme and painting as such in my works. Painting as such is absent because there is no brush movement, nor brushstroke. Instead the surface is constructed of textured modules, echoing both my graphic works and metal objects.

A. Petrovichev Is the choice of your subjects accidental or determined by your transit through countries and continents that has intrigued you by the geometrical 'ornament' observed from a satellite? Say, an airport becomes a fundamental motif. Is it a romantic feeling for space or just space as such?

V. Nasedkin Over the past year or so I have held several painting symposiums in Romania, Vladikavkaz, New York, Austria and Norway. I transit through Norway, Romania and South Ossetia at this exhibition. These places are responsible for the subject matter of the pictures exhibited today. They were made a year ago right there in situ from material found literally under my feet. As for the airports, one usually comes first into contact with some country through its airport. And the geometry of the airport gives one the first surprise and delight. This is only the beginning, though: I go deep into the actual topography of the country of my choice. By showing the geographical and geometrical elements of local layouts, I try to decipher the landscape and to estimate it from the aesthetic point of view. This is a sort of cultural geography and new urbanity, in which we see the layout of a city or landscape as a socio-cultural text. This change of perspective and this possibility to nearly touch the sky gives me a new vision of space, of which I had no idea while staying on the ground. Meanwhile, a virtual image combined with local reality gives birth to a new truth - the truth of art.

WORKS FROM THE PROJECT


Google Earth. Norway. Airport of Stavanger. 2008-09, È.Í. ,120È150 ÓÍ







PHOTOS OF EXPOSITION