There are sculptures with which it is easy to enter into a dialogue, and there are those with which it is pleasant to be in confrontation. There are sculptures in the energy field that you want to enter, from the energy field of others it is impossible to get out. This text Natasha Nagayevskaya— the result of her own impressions of selected sculptural objects, an attempt to recreate certain emotional states and observations recorded and reinterpreted during her stay at the residence for art critics within the framework of the X Kanivsky International Sculpture Symposium, organized by the artistic association KrasneChorne.
Kanev's dichotomy is my perspective this year. What is vulnerable (has character) and changeable (has a state) for almost a decade receives physical embodiment in granite. My relationship with granite is special: this heavy material gives the impression of the artistic process as a masculine process, long-lasting, somewhat even aggressive in its tediousness. This is convinced by the spatio-sound arrangement of the sculptural site at “peak hour”: through the fog of dust, the outlines of men's bodies in protective masks with grinders in their hands are delicately visible.
The male maxim prevails in most of the sculptures presented in the sculpture park on the territory of the hotel “Knyazha Gora” and in the private park of Yuri Stashkov. As part of the Kaniv Sculpture Symposium, which has been held annually since 2011, only two works of sculptors appeared. On the territory of “Princely Mountain” there is only one - a minimalist sculpture by Tanya Preminger. Vulnerable, fragile, in need of protection, maternal, feminine, sexual as a starting point for solving the formal harmoniously complement each other in the works of the Israeli sculptor. Her very plastic work, presented here in Kanev, conceptually goes beyond the character of the sculpture park. The “cover” in this space looks alien and, conversely, it is so sure of its strangeness and so harmonious in the binary comparison of hard/soft, acute/rounded, masculine/feminine, that it sets the surrounding to a special rhythm, and this rhythm conquers and does not leave calm.
Looking for peace and harmony of stone as texture, stone as form, form as emotion is worth in the female torsos and heads of Alexander Diachenko. Sculptures of the artist have a characteristic timbre and recognizable melody. A special impression of Dyachenko's work is made in the period of confrontation of sculptural shadows with shadows of moonlight, when particles of quartz present in the material, reflecting light, create a special flicker and expand the visual-emotional spectrum from delight and pleasure to astral state, transcendence exit through. Repeated walks through the sculpture park prompted me to retransform my attitude towards sculpture that does not cause conflict, does not bet on concepts, but exists in itself, in harmony with itself, at peace with the space that surrounds it.
The juxtaposition of harmony and conflict, calm and emotional tear, hard and soft are complemented in the sculptural object of Ilya Novgorodov, whose creation I followed with interest during this year's symposium. The small model on my palm, which will later acquire the status of a monumental sculpture, became my first acquaintance with the artistic philosophy of the sculptor, his thinking of stone, his extraction of volume from a granite block, fixation (specifically and even inadvertently) of his own states, the artist's attempts to create the state of the sculpture itself. The fact that Ilya does not think of himself as an artist of one direction and works out his own experience in different mediums builds an exceptional attitude towards his works, because, as I think, the essence remains constant — the provocation of space, and this inspires.
