‘Take Me Quickly’ at Smena: exhibition in a shopping centre
Kazan artists were asked to understand art as a commodity
A shopping centre was set up on the second floor of Smena contemporary art centre — the resident artists of the contemporary art centre created a kind of “corners” here reflecting on the idea of whether an art figure is a salesman and a PR person at the Take Me Quicklyexhibition. ZMS is a project of the programme to support young artists from Kazan and Tatarstan. Supervisor of the exhibition was Artur Golyakov (he opened his own exhibition Van Gogh on the same floor at the end of January). Kirill Mayevsky is the co-supervisor of the project was the co-founder of Smena. Read more about it in a report of Realnoe Vremya.
Art for sale
The market has always been the center of the city, notes art critic Sergey Guskov in the description. For Take Me Quickly, artists could either conceptualize their work as a product or a showcase, or, on the contrary, express protest against this approach.
Probably the most important object that went against the rules was Eden in a Market Tentby the BWb1 group (Aaron Sylvester and Ruslan Kuvshin). Inside the tent, typical for fairs, they placed various works, mostly drawings (although the eye was drawn to the explanation of the Quranic surah Merciful), demonstrating the image of an outsider. On the one hand, this is paradise in a hut, on the other — a demonstration of the idea that even the most underground author is in a conditional market.
Boxes and Ants
Several artists were inspired by Japanese culture. Star Trek by Nadezhda Rigova attracted attention with a collection of ceramic daggers against the background of advertising patterns. ORDO team (Makhmud Abzalov and Daria Rodchenko) attracted viewers with a miniature machine from which you could get toys. It is called gachapon, and some teenagers, having shown ingenuity, managed to turn it on. And next to it there was a mini-exhibition of interesting artefacts inspired by the eight-bit theme.
Green Mind by Zukhra Salakhova combined a textile panel Anthill showing the idea that man is not a king and not a dictator of nature, and a collection of costumes.
Nuria Nurgaliyeva called the work “My future goal: to be such a powerful, free and happy person.” She created, in fact, a showcase using polycarbonate. Her flat heroes presented a fragrance developed jointly with Veronika Yamilova.
Irina Safiullina, known for her installations with coins, exhibited many packages for Unpacking at Smena, into which she put meaningful symbols like a heart. “What to take out of the box and what to leave inside and close is up to the viewer.”
Finally, Sasha Shardak (whose family exhibition is still open in the National Library of the Republic of Tatarstan) occupied a significant part of the exhibition, creating a huge advertising space that imitates the interior.
It is interesting that the authors' thoughts about shopping malls and marketplaces coincided with the news that the largest shopping centres in the capital of the republic have completely replaced the global brands that left with the beginning of the special military operation in three years. They have no free retail space. Moreover, the provision of high-quality retail space in Kazan is 21% lower than the national average.
