Anna Nova Gallery is taking part in the Contour 2nd Graphic Fair in Nizhny Novgorod. At their Booth, the Gallery presents works by Alexandra Gart and Andrey Kuzkin that cover the relation between humans and nature, as well as new means of its perception and description.
In their works, both artists discommend the human-centered world model, which is typical for Europeans and which the civilizational culture uses to absent itself from nature or even overmaster it. The graphic sheets by Andrey Kuzkin from his DEEDS OF INSUPERABLE FORCE project are the artist’s interpretation of human dependence on outer forces, vulnerability and weakness in the face of the natural elements. The artist made these works in collaboration with his son Osip, who had been 4 years old at that moment. The boy drew some abstract colorful backgrounds that looked like maps, whereas Andrey Kuzkin put schematic human figures all above them. This act of performative drawing became a visual metaphor, in which the artist’s son became a personification of the natural elements beyond human control.
The monochrome graphic pieces by Alexandra Gart came from the feelings she had as a resident of a contemporary city, an environment that was totally human-made, a most vivid demonstration of human power over the world of nature. At the same time, with her works the artist invites the audience to pay attention to the natural reverse side of the urban environments, the synthesis of natural and human-made things which can be seen in ruined, abandoned, desolate and deserted locations. Alexandra suggests that we change our anthropocentric views to postanthropocentric ones, where the boundaries between human-made and natural things get blurred. The object world is self-sufficient, in fact. It is organic and seamless, it wants to be alive, and it turns out that it doesn’t need humans anymore. Humans are kind of an obstacle for it. In Gart’s imagination, a city becomes a forest and vice versa.
Address:
Parking lot of Sheraton Kremlin Hotel
Nizhny Novgorod, Teatralnaya Ploshad 1
