Artists:
- Irina Drozd
- Ivan Plush
- Egor Koshelev
- Anton Chumak
- Maria Agureyeva
- Olga Mayorova (Kroytor)
- Alexei Mikheyev
- Maxim Santalov
- Ustin Yakovleva
Curators: Irina Drozd and Daria Sedova.
Present-day system of social relations presents to us rather strange and paradoxical picture. Often it’s quite difficult to find bearings within the system, as sometimes is to answer seemingly elementary question – “who am I”? Issue of identity becomes very nearly the key issue of our time. This identity divides, multiplies, presents itself in unusual shapes and formats; elusive as it is, it truly proteus – variable to the utmost.
This environment lacks single-valued system of coordinates that is traditionally agreeable for a man. A man actually invents this system for oneself every time anew. The process of inventing is among other things complicated by cyber character of relations, which seem to find sure place in our lives, but still lacking this surety internally. What can man do in a situation, the only define characteristic of which is total uncertainty?
The answer is to look for universal categories. Some kind of meta-language that everyone understands. Under circumstances when the system of universal values collapses, price becomes such category.
It’s a pluralistic world we live in; “there’s always a choice”, a present-day man declares thus confronting a problem that is nearly insolvable. Where is the line dividing the artificial and the real, and which of the two is the genuine value? Making that choice one’s person intuitively relies on price alone. But whether price determines value? And isn’t the price concept a shallow and forced-from-outside benchmark, while value is the truth independent from price?
Participants of the “Price” exhibition project try to answer these tricky questions thus once again giving a profile of our generation. The exposition includes works that represent unfinished result of selfconsciousness, contradictory and anxious deliberation on values, ability to see through and predict consequences. By playing with the import of cognate words and modifying the concept of “price”, artists interpret and visualize its image for modern society in forms capable for further communication.