Exhibition of Ksenia Finogeeva INDOOR WARRIORS Automatic translate

Alisa Gallery opens the first personal exhibition of Ksenia Finogeeva INDOOR WARRIORS. The exhibition will feature paintings of large format, on which the artist depicts mixed martial arts fighters.

Having singled out the opposition between "substantial" and "non-interpretable" in art, the American critic Susan Sontag announced an era of "flight from interpretation" in contemporary criticism. The approach, when the obvious is pushed aside and the true meaning is sought under it, the hidden content for Sontag turns out to be redundant. Abstract art, pop art are replaced by "mimetic" practices - "where there is no content, there is nothing to interpret," says Sontag. However, the art of Ksenia Finogeeva remains within the framework of the visual tradition, the artist’s work seems to be open to interpretation. What is her project about?

On huge canvases, the artist depicts mixed martial arts fighters, but in real life, all participants in the battles are lawyers, doctors, and managers. The fighters describe their circle of Mixed martial arts as a male brotherhood, a closed community that exists outside of their real life, where wives and children have no right to intrude. Why not a plot for a project on the social agenda that is so in demand today? But social projects require a different degree of involvement both on the part of the artist and on the part of the participants, the project presented to us lacks documentation: interviews with participants, videos, photos.

Ksenia is interested in human emotions, but for her project the artist chooses people who are more than restrained in their emotions. It would seem that we are talking about emotions manifested through the aggression of the struggle, but the declared brutality is contrary to Finogeeva’s painting. The figures of the fighters can in no way be called portraits; moreover, they are all in some kind of suspended somnambulistic state, their fight is static, and their eyes are closed or completely absent.

A project about physicality? But the artist is not a performer and does not work with bodily organics, with the body as a medium, her interest in the body is purely formal. Xenia is an observer. And perhaps its direct observation is the most valuable thing in the project. The artist’s tools are opposed to the athlete’s technique, and although the body for the athlete in this case is not the primary meaning in relation to his action (as is the case in bodybuilding), the artist tries to “behind the obvious” to find the “true meaning”: natural, social and cultural space, that construct our physicality.

text: Anna Romanova.

Ksenia Finogeeva is a visual artist. Born in 1989 in the Crimea. Engaged in painting and graphics. She graduated from the Moscow State Stroganov Academy of Art and Industry, the Higher British School of Design, and the University of Hertfordshire (Great Britain). Lives and works in Moscow.