ASTI Gallery is hosting its “Moscow-Vienna-Moscow. Impressions of Vienna” exhibition

MOSCOW > ALLRUS > ASTI > VIENNA

The 19th International Arts Festival “Art-November” is dedicated to Johannes Brahms, whose oeuvre and name are inextricably connected to Vienna.

As part of the Festival, ASTI Gallery is hosting its “Moscow-Vienna-Moscow. Impressions of Vienna” exhibition in the halls of the State Institute of Art Sciences. These impressions are brought to us by a unique quintet of well-known artists – the “soloists”, Alla Bedina, Svetlana Lanshakova, Lubov Lesokhina, Olga Lisenkova and Alexander Dragovoy, are all participants in the ambitious international project “Austria through the Eyes of Contemporary Russian Artists” (Österreich – aus dem Blickwinkel russischer zeitgenoessischen Meister der Malerei), which was launched two years ago by the ALLRUS Gallery.
 
Each of our exhibitors – artists of the ASTI Gallery circle – has a distinctive artistic personality, a signature style, as well as unique vision and world view. For all of them, the experience of working en plein air in Vienna and the Austrian Alps became an inspiration to create paintings and drawings through which they express (and communicate to the viewer) their delight in the enchanting musical and artistic capital of Europe, and the surrounding landscapes of Austria.

Natella Voiskounski
Natella Voiskounski.
Art-director of the ASTI Gallery

In this quintet of artists, everyone is a soloist, everyone carries his or her own tune, and everyone shows us her or his “own”, “personal” Vienna and Austria. This is the core creative component of the exhibition which we present to the guests of the “Art-November” festival. It is important to us to show how different and diverse artistic concepts and their implementations can be, ranging from the discreet and fragmented to the concrete and generalized. Each artist has a unique way of representing space-time correlations – from capturing the fleeting moment in time to complete rejection of hic et nunc.
 
The viewer sees Vienna and Austria precisely through the eyes of these truly creative individuals, whose visual and emotional perception is sharpened, like the hearing of a musician with a perfect pitch. Intoxicated with the joyous Vienna, with its architecture, so justly compared to music set in stone, and to use Mandelstam’s words, “pampered by the music of light” in the Alps, the painters gave free reign to their remarkable passion for colour, while the graphic artists seemed unable to keep up with the motion of their uninhibited hand, as it submits to their admiring gaze.
 
“The Vienna Quintet of Artists” gives us the quintessential image of Vienna and Austria, the image which is laid out in five separate solo melodies. At the same time, it is a preview of a large exhibition to be presented to the sophisticated Viennese public at the end of 2013.

Lubov   Lesokhina

Lubov Lesokhina

WATERCOLOUR

It’s not at all that mysterious painter,
Who furrowed Hoffmann’s dreams, -
Of that distant and foreign spring
It seems I see a humble plantain.

Анна Ахматова

It was her work en plein air in Vienna and Salzburg that grew into Lubov Lesokhina’s series of watercolour paintings. From the “foreign” Austrian summer she took home to Moscow the charm of Viennese parks, and from Austrian winter – the fairy-tale “Pearly Salzburg”. Her images of a “humble”, modest shed in the Austrian countryside and landscape park ensembles are equally winning. Lesokhina’s impressive feast-like, luxurious still-life “Austria’s Bounty” literally makes the viewer feel like he can “taste” Vienna and smell its aromas, so masterfully did the artist recreate the garden roses and the fruit – and the glass of magnificent Wachau white wine to go with them.

Lubov   Lesokhina. Schoenbrunn. 2011 Lubov   Lesokhina. Grinzing. 2011 Lubov   Lesokhina. The Heart of Vienna. 2011
Schoenbrunn. 2011.
Watercolour on paper. 31 x 31 cm
Grinzing. 2011.
Watercolour on paper. 31 x 41 cm
The Heart of Vienna. 2011
Watercolour on paper. 31 x 41 cm

 

Alla Bedina

Alla Bedina

GRAPHICS

LIKE REMBRANDT,
CHIAROSCURO’S MARTYR,
I’VE GONE DEEP INTO
TIME’S NUMBNESS…

OSIP MANDELSTAM

Alla Bedina followed the poet “into time’s numbness” when she painted Vienna. An artist of intellectual intuition and sophisticated imagination, she easily leaves the present behind in order to recreate the enchanting atmosphere of the past – that of the Vienna of the Habsburgs.

Bedina does so gracefully, with just a touch of irony, which is exactly what makes the viewer take her characters quite seriously. Her graphic triptych “Vienna: Moderne. Baroque. Gothic.” is like three dotted “I”s in her detailed and fascinating account of Vienna’s dominant architectural notes.

Alla Bedina. Габсбурги. Panoramic View of Vienna. Alla Bedina. The Habsburgs. Schoenbrunn. 2011 Alla Bedina. Triptych Vienna  (Baroque). 2011 Alla Bedina. Triptych Vienna  (Moderne). 2011
The Habsburgs. Panoramic View of Vienna. 2011. Pastel on paper. 65 х 50 cm The Habsburgs. Schoenbrunn. 2011. Pastel on paper. 65 х 50 cm Triptych Vienna (Baroque). 2011
Pastel on paper. 86 x 35 cm
Triptych Vienna (Moderne). 2011
Pastel on paper. 86 x 35 cm

 

Olga Lisenkova

Olga Lisenkova

GRAPHICS

Thursday, off to Belvedere
Friday, to Jena we race
.......................................................
And on Thursday, temptation leads us
Back again to Belvedere

Johann Wolfgang Goethe

Olga Lisenkova paints the present-day Belvedere as if she has taken up Goethe’s joyous mood: a rainy day is imbued with a festive feeling, brought about by splashes of red banners, red reflections on the wet asphalt, a red umbrella carried by a museum visitor, walking in the viewer’s direction… “Belvedere” belongs to a series of paintings the artist called “Viennese Style”; the four works share the same colour scheme, with red being expressively dominant. A tireless traveller and a master of genre painting, Lisenkova is always trying to capture the seemingly elusive – the character, the manner, and the behavioural style of people she comes across, like those in Belvedere … on Thursday, be it a sunny or a rainy day.

Ольга Лисенкова. Viennese Style 4
Viennese Style 4.
Pastel on paper. 50 x 65 cm

 

Alexander Dragovoy

Alexander Dragovoy

PAINTING & DRAWINGS

Without doubt – a perspective.
A calendar. Or rather,
from inflamed throats
A tunnel into psychological depths

Joseph Brodsky

It was indeed Hundertwasser’s endless “tunnel of visionary images” that completely absorbed Alexander Dragovoy’s attention while in Vienna. His paintings pay homage to one of the most creative Austrian artists and architects of the 20th century. The vibrant palette of this eccentric dreamer from Vienna caught Dragovoy’s eye, and he created his mosaic-like paintings, made up from the basic “semantic” elements of Hundertwasser’s art, by submerging himself in the “psychological depths” of Hundertwasser’s twists, spirals and endless lines, which have become a symbol of Austria’s art.

Alexander Dragovoy. Альпы. View on the Mountain Grimming Alexander Dragovoy. Canal Leading to the Hundertwasser’s Houses. Alexander Dragovoy.Walk in the Alpine Village. Dusk..
The Alps. View on the Mountain Grimming. 2012. Pencil on tinted paper. 35 х 50 cm Canal Leading to the Hundertwasser’s Houses. 2012. Mixed media on carton. 60 x 80 cm Walk in the Alpine Village. Dusk. 2012. Mixed media on cardboard 70х100 cm

 

Svetlana Lanshakova

Svetlana Lanshakova

ETCHINGS

Oh Steinway, like a black bird,
Your Lofty Voice, your Lofty Fate!
.......................................................
I froze wordless like the rocky earth…

Борис Кушнер

Svetlana Lanshakova offers us her own, post-modernistic view of Vienna. There are, perhaps, very few people who have been able to see the Austrian capital at such sharp an angle, through the sharp eyes of an artist, whose vision gives an edge to the curvy shapes of the Viennese Baroque. Lanshakova carves a sculpture out of a single architectural detail. She turns a hallway into a philosophical parable, Albertinaplatz – into a “Steinway, like a white bird”… Her etchings are “wordless like the rocky earth”, but they breathe with a passionate ease…

Svetlana Lanshakova. Vienna. Mariahilfigestrasse Svetlana Lanshakova. Vienna.ArtPoint.
Vienna. Mariahilfigestrasse. Etching Vienna.ArtPoint. Etching

The festival's site - www.art-november.ru

 

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