October 18, 2017, 12:57 [Arguments of the Week. Volgograd, Maria STROGOVA]
Actors made up and dressed as Lenin and Dzerzhinsky greeted guests at the opening of the exhibition “October Seventeen” at the Mashkov Museum in Volgograd, but these were almost the only characters that evoked associations with the events of a century ago.
The October exhibition in the museum halls on Chuikov Street brought together very different artists. Although all three are connected by a teacher-student relationship, each of them has their own ideas, techniques, and interpretations.
The entire first floor is occupied by the paintings of Elena Orlova, who prepared for the exhibition with astonishing diligence. As she herself joked: “If, starting in 1917, I had painted one picture a year, by now I would have had just enough for this exhibition.” These are mainly watercolors in an unusual technique, reminiscent of jewel-like patchwork or a large-bead mosaic, when a picture is assembled into one large color field out of the smallest multicolored particles. There are many still lifes: the artist’s especially beloved slender irises, double peonies, carelessly light-hearted daisies, or an entire floral gathering in the work “Botanical Garden.” After resting on their momentarily captured beauty, the eye moves on to canvases that reflect travel notes, observations, and memories, forming a very personal kind of diary that the generous artist has opened to her admirers. There is October here as well, but it is an October with an interesting book and a warm blanket, with a cup of tea and only memories of once-crowded gatherings — the red banners of autumn demonstrations outside the windows.
Elena Orlova’s pupil Maria Melikhova, in her series “My Family,” told warm stories about her loved ones, about things known to her only from her parents’ stories and old family photographs. The series is made in the technique of cyanotype, unfamiliar to most viewers. Ten cyanotypes present the history of one family as part of a large world, a large country. The works are full of memory and tender love for those close to her. The same tremulous vision fills the 15 canvases of the painting series devoted to the architecture of Volgograd. It is a remarkable city of Stalin-era buildings, where every balcony and every bay window is individual and unrepeatable.
The admiration of the architectural elements of old Volgograd houses continues in a series of 10 scarves made in the technique of painting on silk. Maria Melikhova’s rather intimate works, devoid of pathos, demonstrate a commitment to tradition on the one hand and a search for new interpretations on the other.
Sergey Blokh, like those revolutionary artists of a hundred years ago, is engaged in the discovery of new forms and meanings. His exhibition area presents 12 circular canvases and three art objects in the form of cages. On the canvases are birds of paradise and color, which becomes the object of depiction. Color embodies sound; birds of paradise are the source of color and sound. The cages are empty. The entire project is titled “Vowels.” It is about freedom, because in a cage there is no place for either color or sound. Color, like birds, has its own life and its own flight path.
All three artists speak of a peaceful, bright, radiant October. The exhibition will run until November 12.
