VITALY PUSHNITSKY
ORPHEUS IN HADES
27.01 - 15.04.2023
The experimental space - Marina Gisich Projects
Monday - Saturday
11:00 - 19:00.
Registration is not needed
Free entrance.
Vitaly Pushnitsky
1967/USSR/Leningrad
1994 — graduated from The Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, graphics department. Has been a member of the Union of Artists of St. Petersburg since 1994.
Has worked at the State Russian Museum in the Contemporary Art Department since 1996. Lives and works in St. Petersburg, Russia. Creates works of paintings, graphics, sculpture and installations.
During the past years, the significant projects were presented at:
o The State Russian Museum, The State Hermitage,
o Moscow Museum of Modern Art,
o The New Museum of Aslan Tchekhoev,
o Multimedia Art Museum Moscow,
o Calvert 22 Gallery (London),
o Rudolfinum Museum (Prague),
o Waino Aaltonen Museum of Art (Turku).
Participant of 56th Venice Biennale for Contemporary art (Mauritius National pavilion, curated group show).
Participant of 8th Moscow International Biennale of Contemporary art (together with Alex Katz).
In 2012 his works were enlisted in Vitamin P2 (Phaidon) catalogue: New Perspectives in Painting.
Works in primary private collections:
BREUS Foundation
“Ekaterina” culture foundation
Novy Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
RuArts Foundation
Novatek Company collection
State museum collections:
The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
Freud's Dream museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
The National Centre of Contemporary Art, Moscow, Russia
Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow, Russia
The State Kaliningrad Art Gallery, Kaliningrad, Russia
PERMM Modern Art Museum, Perm, Russia
The State Novosibirsk Art Gallery, Novosibirsk, Russia
Primary collections in Europe, USA:
Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung art collection, Frankfurt, Germany
Kolding Art Institute, Kolding, Denmark
Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, St. Francisco, USA
CEC ArtLinks Collection, NY, USA
Kolodzei Art Foundation, Highland Park, NJ, USA
Mallin Collection & Buckhorn Sculpture Park, NY, USA
Red Bull Collection, Salzburg, Austria
Catalogue Vitamin P2 (Phaidon): New Perspectives in Painting. 2011. ISBN: 9780714861609 (Pushnitsky is the only russian artist whose works were included in the publication)
Over the Atlantic
A long flight across the Atlantic. I am soaring above clouds that look like an exposed brain lit by the last rays of the setting sun. and I am pondering what lives within me and how diet alters one's state of perseption. Ultimately, there is probably no difference between bioligical consciousness and any other sort. They all intersect, coexist and make constant use of each other's capabilities. Take, for example, the cow and the human being. Of course, the cow has a worse time of it, especially under a bad master. Yet cows are alive as a spicies thanks to humans… And how they coexist? Probably in the same way as the sewing machine and people…
I remember Bradbury writing about a sewing machine rollong uncertainly down the street, looking in askant silence at a passer-by… It is entirely likely that the consciousness in my brain is far less than the consciousness in the cloud over which I am flying. After all, if you look at the structure of the cloud's surface it is the same as a brain, only a bit bigger and more attractive.
Or how about this? I have noticed that different types and shapes of cloud exist above different parts of the world. Perhaps they depend on the regions or the people that live beneath them and change shape on their account? The egocentric attitude of humans regarging themselves es the basis for everything, is a habit, though, and, in my view, a mistaken one. I suspect it is more probable that people's consciousness depends on the shape of the clouds, and that the processes of real consciousness are taking up there. It is not for nothing that we always raise our eyes to the heavens when we encounter a difficult question, seeking answers from the source when we don't find them within us.
Vitaly Pushnitsky, a fragment from the book "Forest"
In 2020, the artist began to work on the Gap project, which includes texts and paintings.
Gap is a state of the gap between worlds, a state of consciousness outside of one's body. "The word is taken by me from Buddhist treatises. The British called it "The Tibetan Book of the Dead" in their translation, so that it was immediately clear what it was about. Texts about death are studies of what will happen to you when you leave the body. Provided that you believe that your consciousness is continuous. This is the main question. And there is no only answer here. There is only an approach to this issue. But there are teachings that bring experience in this matter. With our critical European mind, we can ask: who will confirm these data? How do we check this? We can only agree with the desire that it will be so, or deny it. And this is, in fact, equally legitimate. Death as a theme for art is as noble as any other theme. I don't think she's scary or that she denies life. This is the frame of all our activities, all our thoughts. It's not a bad idea to try on the finale all your life. You don't do unnecessary things, you get rid of the dubious and unnecessary, if you remember that death has to do with you. We usually think that it's not about us, but about the neighbors. For me, this is my planned project right now. This is some kind of intellectual task that I'm thinking about."
V. Pushnitsky
In 2022, the artist's first author's book "Garden", was published. It incorporated reflections on life, death, art, and man.
It is neither a memoir nor an artistic prose, but rather resembles an ancient oriental treatise on art written by the author with today's idea of the world in which witty interpretations of ancient myths coexist with lyrical arguments about the nature of matter.
The "Garden" has a form carefully thought out by the artist: about fifty pictorial illustrations were created simultaneously with the text itself, and form a kind of parallel flow to its content in the book. The Garden series reveals the idea of artistic perception through the energy of color. Both in the text and in the painting Pushnitsky refuses the storyline. However, it does not exclude the figure of the observer, who is outside, as a kind of author's voice-over, broadcasting individual reflections of the artist.
In 2023, a second text called "Forest" was published, it was created in the format of an "artist's book". This edition contains about 60 new graphic works, which are not just illustrations, but an integral part of the project.
Vitaly Pushnitsky's new personal project impresses with its richness: about 90 paintings, a 9-meter installation, works of video art that are simultaneously nft objects, a new book by the artist… All this has gathered in the LAB space of the Marina Gisich Gallery and serves as a confirmation to the main thesis of the author. The thesis is easy and complicated in the same time: present is always indefinite.
There is a key encoded in the title, but it is better to be careful, Pushnitsky's metaphors are extensive and multilayered, it is better not to read them contextually. The artist is talking about time intervals, epochs and eons – periods, by which his evolution can be marked, are not calculated in years. It is an evolution of methods of plastic language, inner work with colour, texture, surfaces. His major philosophy and worldview are being tested, they need some kind of a clear laconic shell. But the author never gives us explicit answers, the maximum that we can expect from him is the dichotomy of concepts: death and not-death, life and not-life. Names are only convenient metonymic tropes to illustrate borderline, indefinite condition. And that is how he thinks of time, in its grammatical sense.
It is important for Vitaly that the author is in complete unity with his works, in fact works of the new project are certificates for the subscription of the artist's way of thinking for the period. And these thoughts lie in the field of art theory more than in the field of manifest. So the abstract form for Pushnitsky is an inseparable case of reality, bring the object closer or remove it and here is a dropout into the abstract language, and the same with literary metaphors, the more concrete the image, the more reality slips away. The fight of apollonian и dionysian seems to be finished to Pushintsky (at least temporary), apollonian lost, but the author is not going to let it go. On the contrary, an attempt to add harmony, light, colour, classical frontal compositions returns with a new breath, it is either the author's sentimental insistence on the past , or a transformation spell to his new condition.
However, plastic language is not enough for Vitaliy, he turns to the text. During the opening of the exhibition, the second artist’s book - FOREST - continuation of his literary experience - will be presented to the public. This time, a clearly traceable plot appears in the book: a character's journey, trials, encounters with creatures, a parable within a parable and an access to the sea… This is actually a one-man show: the author states the thesis about the impossibility of fixing neither himself, nor time, nor space.
Everything has become an infinitely long table for work, where faded flowers, masterpieces, sketches, rubbish are piled, and life-long worries are only a fleeting dream, while the arrow is still flying into Sebastian's body, and Orpheus has not lowered the lyre yet.