Elena Kitaeva.
Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner
Stella Art
Foundation in Skaryatinsky Pereulok
March 10 – May 2, 2011
Stella Art
Foundation is pleased to present a sculptural project by renowned artist Elena
Kitaeva. Kitaeva continues the Suprematist line begun by Kazimir Malevich in
1910, which is based on the strictest visual discipline. Geometrical forms and
restraint in the main color decisions lie at the heart of Suprematism, while
its goal is pure artistic creation with no practical application whatsoever.
Exhibition view
Faithful to the
Suprematist canon, to which the number three is fundamental, Elena Kitaeva
constructs her multi-figured sculptural composition as the tryptich Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. The artist
likewise works only with three entirely suprematist colors: red, white, and
black. For Kitaeva, as for Malevich, white signifies the world space (in our
case the white cube of the exhibition hall) in which the drama of black and red
is played out. Kitaeva’s figures are painted in these colors and numbered by
powers of three. Breakfast has three
figures, Dinner nine, and Lunch 12, not counting the nine figures
of the “watchmen” guarding the territory occupied by the three main
compositions.
The word
“Suprematism” comes from the Latin supremus,
meaning the highest, the foremost, the last, the utmost, and thus demands the
artist combine extremes and use forms both simple and universal. This is likely
why Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner signify
at once both a basic daily cycle (that of food, according to the artist), and
the cycle of universal human cultural eternity. Breakfast and Dinner are
directly associated with the titles of many great classical artworks, not to
mention one of the key events in Biblical history. Lunch, meanwhile, is a collection of vessels symbolizing a hidden
fullness, a secret treasure, sacral sustenance for a select few. It gives the
whole project its central meaning and a key to its multilayered interpretation.
It is entirely
natural that the Suprematist Elena Kitaeva’s concentrated symbolism should be
combined with a refined formalism. For historical suprematism, such a synthesis
was the result of leaving art for universal “cosmism,” which was paradoxically
continued in everyday Constructivist industrial design. In Kitaeva’s case,
everything happens the other way around. A professional designer, she
sublimates her practical activity in pure art forms as she unfolds Malevich’s
cosmos with the totality of cultural history.
Photo-report
|
|
|
Our facebook group