Exhibition of Timofey Smirnov "Attributes of Art" Automatic translate

This exhibition is the end of the project “MEASURE OF VALUE”, begun by Timofei Smirnov in 2011. Then the author, wanting to help humanity find the usual measure of everything really great that it created in the non-material sphere - culture, art, proposed utopian “money”, the same abstract, like those that we are promised are backed by gold reserves. This was followed by the “Protest of the artist Timofei Smirnov” (2013) and “Moscow Special” (2015).

Timofey Smirnov’s new project includes 10 art objects. In it, the author considers where in everyday life a person is confronted with what works of art depict. The artist argues: “In the old days, images had a hierarchy. In the dining room of the Russian estate there were portraits of heroes, for example, Bagration, Barclay de Tolly, in the bedchamber - portraits of relatives. Disgraced - under a rag, like parrots sheltered for sleep. And the closer to the kitchen, the more “pictures of fondant jars”, as they said then. Now what is the hierarchy? After the "Rebellion of the Masses" by Jose Ortega y Gasset it became clear that all the images are from this very can. Well, or almost everything. However, there are no images in the houses. Previously, at least there were calendars and stickers in the latrines, but now? ”

For a long time, works of art have been replicated many times, used in advertising, everyday life, quoted by other artists, with the development of animation, they began to wink, blink the viewer, that is, in the eyes of the majority they lost their greatness and acquired the features of elements of mass culture. Timofey Smirnov examines the use of reproduced images on the streets: “Now the images are on the street. On bags and bags. Now - bags and bags. They dazzle, compete. Moms are punished not to go with "bad" packages. Although this is an example of desperate redneck. Packages - and advertising, and fun, and messages. They (packages) are cooler than T-shirts. They are an unspoken manifest. Just about what? In view of this circumstance, I decided to depict the packages. But as always theirs are absurd. Each of them is a theme, and together they are attributes of art. But in packages, bags, shopping bags and files. In the literal and figurative sense. "

Here is the art object "Our fsio" - in a string bag, potatoes and a bust of Pushkin. The author says: "I only emphasize - the imposition of art is unsafe and ridiculous." There is an association with the statement of B. Pasternak: “Mayakovsky is planted like potato”, made after the death of the poet. Framed drawings ("Food Set") languish in a string bag, as in a prison. Is art a commodity? “Treble clef” - in the case for violin an ax, on the blade of which a relief scene with the participation of drinkers and musicians is depicted. A metaphor of the dark side of art, a symbol of "Russian rebellion" and savvy "porridge from an ax."

Timofey Smirnov about his exhibition: “my project is“ academic obscenity ”. In the genre of staging - trompe l’oeil lies something else that was "scared" of being an educational "study", but was not afraid to be an art object. Reality turning into an artifact is the theme of the project. ” So the artist proposes to consider as artifacts objects that combine reproduced works of art and everyday objects. Then the question arises, how does art relate to a consumer society - as a dialogue in the metaphysical sense between the personal and the external, between the material and the spiritual, the sensual, as a source of information? Worth considering!