The ASTI Gallery introduces at the Bach Festival drawings by the artists Alla Bedina and Svetlana Lanshakova

INTERNATIONAL JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH FESTIVAL
The ASTI Gallery introduces

The exhibition of series of graphic works
by the artists Alla Bedina and Svetlana Lanshakova
"BACH’S ARCHITECTONICS"

On March 3, 2015, the exhibition "BACH’S ARCHITECTONICS" was opened in State Institute of Art Science (Moscow).

The exhibition will be displayed until March 21.

Curator of the exhibition: Natella Voiskunski

FROM DIES IRAE TO LUX AETERNA

Svetlana Lanshakova
Choral prelude in G major “Before Your Throne I Now Appear"
Original: the old lithograph “Interior of Cologne Cathedral". Etched collage, oil, white chalk on cotton paper. Nos. 6,7/12. Size: 40 х106 cm

The exhibition project ‘‘Architectonics of Bach” is conceptually linked to the architecture of the glowing gothic style - the upward bound “music in stone sounding like Bach’s polyphony", refracted in multi-coloured sparks of artfully stained glass, gliding along the “monstrous ribs” of the vaults, and laying bare, just as Mandelstam did, “the Gothic spirit’s rational abyss”.

Its title creates a puzzle of sorts, constructs an exalted narrative and builds a spiritual vertical: from Dies irae to Lux aeterna. This vertical threads through all art forms. Bach’s music sounds not only in churches and concert halls - it also pulsate in works of visual art, it is clearly audible in lines of poetry...

Bach entered Russian poetry through the main entrance of the Silver Age, whose outstanding figures discerned in the music of “Bach whom nobody trumps in reason” Isaiah’s triumph as well as “the polysyllabic cry of the organ”... The composer undoubtedly talks with God, and listening to Bach’s music, we seem to be following this conversation, while also receiving hope from this music, experiencing tragic joy, and feeling not in the least surprised at Mstislav Rostropovich’s choice when he decided to play the Sarabande from Bach’s Cello Suite in D minor at the ceremony of awarding Boris Pasternak’s Noble Prize to Pasternak's family - a ceremony which was late by decades.

The ASTI Gallery introduces at the Bach Festival drawings by the artists Alla Bedina and Svetlana Lanshakova in a homage of sorts to the great composer.

Alla Bedina
Leipzig. Peterskirche.
2015 Ink, pen on paper 42x30 cm

Alla Bedina “takes our eyes by the hand” and leads us to the cathedrals where Bach performed. An unrivalled master in line drawing, she literally compels the viewer to follow her hand’s movements, “leading” us from the leftmost point in the cathedral’s foundation to the spire, without missing any single brick, any single detail of the architectural decor. Aptly captured and faithfully-rendered by Bedina, these details reveal the old Germany directly through the eyes of people who lived in the era represented by the artist - she needs their presence as “resurrected” eye witnesses of the time and the place. The composer’s portrait and the genre scene with his family are marked by slightly ironic sympathy; pulling at the thread of irony, one notes that the family is captured for posterity against the background of Bach... Svetlana Lanshakova introduces the project “Performing Bach”. Her etchings feature artfully treated historical artefacts (photographs, note sheets, concert bills). The ancient technique of etching is combined with a modern inventive approach to the creation of multi-layered and polysemantic works. The keen sensitivity to Bach’s music “sharpens” not only the artist’s hearing but her eyesight as well. As a result, we have a visual cycle which bemuses us with a combination of the tender, delicate colour element and the air of exalted tragedy permeating the great composer’s works. Presenting the material in a manner far from direct and relying on certain associations, the artist creates for viewers an atmosphere of emotional participation, thus making possible a journey into the Past - the past which for more than three centuries now has remained the most real Present thanks to Bach’s genius.

Natella Voiskunski