starting 25 December 2020
An intimate New-year project created for the Arsenal by the Nizhny Novgorod artists, participants of the Tikhaya (“Quiet”) )workshop Anton Morokov, Andrei Olenev, and Yakov Khorev.
The year 2020 and the pandemic era made changes to all spheres of life, artistic practices including. Staying at home, continuous self-restrictions of all kinds, and inability to realize ideas and projects in habitual formats made artists and viewers get adapted to the new reality. It’s another time we all realized the value of the live contact both with a human being and a piece of art.
A New Year celebration is a borderline time full of anxious hopes about the future. Loneliness and being tired, or dreams coming true and belief in miracles: What do artists make of the transition from one year to the following one? What is this celebration like for them? What is it for you?
Anna Bolshem
Curator of the project
Participants
Anton Morokov
Celebration for one. 2020
Installation. Table, chairs, tablecloth
“The year that passed made us experience a huge spectrum of previously unknown emotions: being tired pf isolation, global loneliness, paranoia, and fear, so we expect of the new year some qualitative changes, a reset, a return to the old, habitual lifestyle. We are yearning for untroubled, live interaction, dinners, encounters; during the celebration we are especially keen on replacing distance by intimacy. My installation is about rethinking of the New Year celebration concept when the old traditions of a merry din of a feast face the challenges of today”.
Andrei Olenev
Buckets. 2020
Installation. Buckets, LED lamps
This project by Andrei Olenev is a continuation of the subject invented for the Bell-tower installation (2019) where the upset buckets appeared to a viewer as an image of tangled mess and emptiness. In the new work the artist fills the bucket with light to turn them into Christmas bells, a symbol of hope and joy.
Yakov Khorev
2020 Quality New guipure Survival Open air First aid Silver Designer Electrical Stellar matter Twinkling light Unisex A list of wishes Window gazing. 2020
Installation. Mylar, gifts, spotlight
The installation by Yakov Khorev is a shop window containing gifts out of a wish list of a modern young person. A viewer is offered to have a look at it through the traditional mesh pattern of guipure imaged on the glass. All gifts are wrapped into cocoons of silvery film, and the viewers are offered to have guesses what objects the film hides. The name of the installation goes back to popular hashtags from social media or search engine queries through which newer and newer connections do constantly emerge between different people, places, and events.