BEYT - NAIMA - ART

These artists live in a world where a bootmaker addresses his customer with the following words, while delivering him his new boots made to measure: "You will die, but your boots will be like new, as before". It is the world where the objects inherited are treated with all worthy love and respect. The world where the elders are still seducing Susannah, not jerking themselves off at a free porn site.

One's allegiance to an object cannot be regarded apart from one's respect to the craft. The works of the artists presented at the exhibition are very different from the dominating trends of the modern society, where form and content are not in unity anymore, where ideas prevail and their material realisation is a peripheral matter, where art lost materiality (concept is not for hanging on the wall) resulting in devaluation of the craft principles of honour and dignity. This art is based on craftmanship in particular, declaring openly its connection to the tradition of classical oil painting. Similarly to the masters of the past times, they create objects. These objects do have a size, a weight and, finally, a value. Like the real craft masters they use all their craftmanship, all their talent to handle a rectangular canvas with oil paint, to the full due. Working in such a manner, they find themselves, willing or not, in a world where time passes differently, where people still exchange long letters, where furniture is custom-made by a woodcarver, not bought at the IKEA.   

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Sasha OKUN

Translation by Andrey MASHINIYAN