Artists:
- Nikita Alekseev
- Anya Bouyvid
- Dmitriy Gutov
- Irina Drozd
- Julia Ovchinnikova
- Nikola Ovchinnikov
- Valeriy Koshlyakov
- Nikolay Polisskiy
Author of the project: Ivan Surikov
Curator: Aleksandr Evangeliya
Co-Curator, author of the film «Mariposa: russian arrival»: Julia Ovchinnikova
Curator of the St. Petersburg group: Anya Bouyvid
October 28 there will be an opening of the exhibition “Artists of the World” organized by the “Agency. Art Ru “ (Moscow) and “Chayofa Gallery” (Tenerife) within the frames of the special project at 4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art. The exhibition will present the results of two years artistic experience – a creative journey of Russian artists to the “Residence of Artists of the World” on the island of Tenerife, at the “Mariposa” park. The exhibition will feature work in a variety of techniques by well-known in Russian and worldwide art scene. The project is officially supported by the Russian Ministry of Culture.
Geopolitical landscapes of art are constantly changing shape and topography. They move around the globe sending out new messages and securing specific sacred zones. Images born in the course of this process primarily reflect metaphysical shifts in culture, bringing universal strategies back to the contemporary art scene and switching from a direct perspective to a reversed one.
Ivan Surikov’s project entitled «Coat of Arms of the World» belongs exactly to the kind of innovations where radicalism is found next to authentic archaic motives. In the most unusual and paradoxical way, personal art of Ivan fuses social principals of actual culture with semantic symbolism of icon painting encompassing its rituals and canonical forms. His art embodies the ideas of Teilhard de Chardin on emerging of planetary ecology known as noosphere. The art space inhabited by images created by Ivan Surikov is saturated by energy structures with a strong ethical component. His art space exists as an entity, as a subject that absorbs and cures existing, yet ruining and eluding matter. The space of his artwork also integrates the spirit of cutting – edge social art communities.
Tenerife, an exotic island located between Europe and Africa, is famous for having all natural zones of the Earth. Today the island that has been on the routes of human civilization including the routes of pyramids, acquires one more additional dimension. The art community that is presenting the project “Coat of Arms of the World” emerges here. Fundamental origin of this cultural dimension is emphasized not only by the international line-up of the art group «Mariposa», but also by presence of the Russian content. Russian project of Ivan Surikov primarily testifies to the fact that art forms typical for icon painting as well as principals of the organic consent are being returned to contemporary art. It says a lot about the opportunities opening up in the course of modern social-cultural processes. While contemporary world and history of culture is rewritten by digital technologies, its genetic code, creative nature as well as individual art strategies of “Artists of the World” are being carefully and inalterably preserved by the art community at the Tenerife Island. The residence of «Artists of the World» in Mariposa gradually turns into a permanent installation in the natural surroundings. It can be regarded as some kind of a universal model in which both creative and individual action is inseparable from nature and art. While «rewriting worlds» artists of Mariposa are forming the universal palimpsest of culture following up its dramatic development instead of overscoring it.
Vitaly Patzukov