Button and modernism. Exhibition by Andrei Chezhin Automatic translate

The Button and Modernism project was created and expanded gradually; its versions have already been visited in Russia, Europe and America. At the exhibition in the Museum of Erarta, the most complete version will be presented, which has grown into the author’s “Pushpin Museum”.

Andrei Chezhin created objects and photo collages in which he imitated the works and characteristic techniques of iconic modernist artists. With great knowledge and irony, the author presents us with the exclusivity of each creator.

Andrey Chezhin’s project is a postmodern textbook on modernism. Here, the artist applied the entire classic set of techniques: revision and ironic reassessment of the achievements of the previous era, hypertextuality, quotation, undetected position of the author’s "I". Chezhin literally teaches modernism, again and again provoking him into a duel-dialogue, sticking the tip of his button-sword into it.

The image of the button - flat and at the same time voluminous - appeared by chance for Chezhin. Representatives of modernism tried to overcome the inertia of the picture plane, either in the direction of even more flattening it, or, conversely, introducing the effect of sculpture into the picture. Andrei Chezhin plays all this in his works. The smooth side of the button becomes a canvas, as in a homage to Jackson Pollock, and the side with a sharp edge turns into a sculpture, as in dedication to Richard Serre. In the homage of Lucio Fontana, both are combined, since Fontana himself made vertical cuts on the canvases, creating literally three-dimensional paintings.

For Chezhin, the button became a module, an additional element (the term of the theory of the same name by Kazimir Malevich). The artist measures the variety of ideas of modernism with a condo clerical circle, goes to modern authors and further to everyday objects. The objects that Andrei Chezhin shoots go beyond the scope of aesthetic photographs, becoming independent works. In them, the artist reveals the characteristic, adding to the design of utilitarian objects the design of the button itself.