Lev Khesin. Meta Tags
Stella Art Foundation in Skaryatinsky pereulok
July 17 – August 17, 2008
Despite numerous declarations about the revival of painting, it is
still in crisis. And the reason for this crisis is the same as for the
phenomenon of conceptualization of the new art practice as a whole. It
is believed that the reason for it is in the lack of direct contact
between the contemporary man and reality, in the mediation of his
relationship with the world by a whole set of technological gadgets,
materials and procedures. They kill any life, so why discussing just
painting? Yet, there is a need for it, moreover, there are real
precedents of its presence in art practice.
Lev Khesin’s creative work is such a precedent. One can say that his
painting is abstract, that its samples do not depict anything, do not
“denote” any external phenomena. It is impossible to say for sure if
his works are paintings or objects though. They have a base and a layer
of paint like other paintings. But the size of this layer of paint
exceeds every norm of painting, and it incorporates additional
substances, besides that, which is usually characteristic of a
sculpture or an object. Moreover, Khesin’s work lacks strict
geometrical borderlines of the traditional canvas decorated with a
frame. There are no borders to decorate here for his paintings are
simultaneously objects, and objects (just as other things) do not need
to either depict and name anything outside their own self, or be
demonstratively extracted out of their environment.
Khesin’s works resemble lumps of colored substance. Physically it is
semitransparent silicone combined with certain of pigments. But
visually it is something quite different. This fusion produces a
substance where color acquires sophisticated depth resembling that of a
precious stone. And this association has nothing to do with jewelry,
for it is natural, or alchemical, if you like, as purely artistic
manipulations eliminate the distinction between the physical mode and
the mode of aesthetic imagery. Transmutation makes routinely
technological substances overvalued, they begin to function as natural
artifacts, some ancient relics for which many great painters of the
past had a real fancy. The names of individual “relics” (and unique
precious stones always had their own names) are borrowed by the author
from old English, a half-forgotten language, so that nothing but their
acoustics were readable hiding (but not destroying) their concrete
messages. The name for the project as a whole is selected in the same
contrasting way: “meta tags” is a term used in contemporary web design,
also designating some hidden information.
There is a saying: “stupid like a painter” which is a fragment of the
myth about the fools of geniuses, great painters of the past. But today
a great artist cannot afford the luxury of being a fool. And Khesin’s
practice of generating artifacts that convince senses is a cunning
intellectual project based on the conjunction of quite different things
which are equally distant from each other, such as old and new, natural
and artificial, conceptual calculation and sensuous material, avoidance
of nomination and accurate designation. And it elegantly skips the
boring for the viewer routine craftsmanship, this eternal compensation
for the real aesthetical result, for the effect of wonder.
Vladimir Levashov
I Moscow International Biennale for Young Art «Qui vive?»
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