Emerging Russian multi-disciplinary artist Maria Babikova's work has been described as a sensory conflict: Both etherial and foreboding. Whatever the précis it has a strength and beauty to me that carries with it solid visions of herself. Though currently based in NYC Maria's home city Chelyabinsk, seems to maintain a nearness. She talks "home" with a certain quota of romance amidst the obvious hardcore grit and bleakness of the place. Perhaps it's this spirit along with her obvious understanding of compositional devices that allows her to combine effectively with the atmospheric landscape and produce more than a decorative image but something evocative and full of sentiment.
In her words, "Art for me is a way to express the mixed feelings of intricate constellation of events and emotions that have affected and touched me. The works then incarnate the elusive meaning of existence and what it means to be alive today."
In her latest works there is a confident and heightened awareness of pictorial space, there is a foreboding sense of moody low tone colour that intertwines across the vertical canvas. This heavy dark is balanced by the visceral mesh of colour that somehow gracefully dances across each canvas and what initially seems simple keeps one engaged with the work allowing absorption into the heavy and cleverly applied paint.
As for the artist herself she is as much a 'constellation of events' as is her work..Ask her about her sudden quitting of an internationally successful modelling career to fine art school and she’ll shut you down quicker than light- the relevance is little but interesting and she certainly prefers the focus to remain soundly on her art. And so we shall.. At their best a peculiar special awkwardness electrifies these works and we are most proud to be hosting her as our new artist in residence. Maria Babikova's paintings and collages will be available for purchase from MJOLKHOMME objects beginning the 27th of May.
Anchored by Tim Blankety Blanks Garage Magazine's mini documentary Take My Picture, examines the rise and recent mutation of the 'street' style photography phenomenon. I have no desire to add my somewhat, let's be honest, jaded voice to the dialogue. I will say only this: Perhaps the most crucial element that should have been at least tabled in this film is the absurd absence of "street" in street-style photography. Increasingly individual style is being bogged on by the commercial aspect of "peacocking". Paying or 'gifting' an individual to wear their kit, brands and designers are using the opportunity to promote. Both subject and photographer/blogger alike are benefiting from the business. It is isn't rampid but it will be. I have absolutely no issue with the economic intercourse, except this: "street" style was a rare opportunity for individuals to exhibit young design, my fear is that we are squashing this key outlet for 'new' designers and replacing it with those designers/ maisons that can afford it. The same way magazines revolve their editorial and "pulls" almost exclusively around their advertisers. This not only stifles the development of independent design, it also encourages the mediocre as representation is given to those with money rather than those with talent. Again, I have no issue with the 'outside-the-show' circus - as long as we label it for what it is. Let's quit the faux "everyday" nomenclature, it villifies the average and creates intensly unfair social pressures via false consumer aspirations. Oh and Phil I love you dearly, you know I do my love, but a bubble bath...really? xx
Antony of Antony and the Johnsons' recent ethereal performance with the Heritage Orchestra at Givenchy AW 2013 (PFW) transformed the "show" experience and was an aide-mémoire to why I entered and remain in this sometimes plug-ugly industry. The entire experience was beautifully borderless. The British performers powerful vision of the world he wants his art to reflect and help create was reflected in a note for each attendee. The quote is from his Future Feminine discourse, found on his 2012 live album: Cut the World. Hegarty makes the vision explicit in a seven-and-a-half minute, pretty much impromptu monologue delivered in Copenhagen in September the previous year. He is a wise woman and as an earnest man I couldn't agree more with his thoughts. Listen to the entire piece here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npyAImVa7qw
Tidbit in the December 31 issue of the New Yorker got my brain spinning on a favored topic: what defines art as art? Particularly in a world where art as a commodity may as well be stocks, real estate - anything people invest in to turn a profit, regardless of the content or quality of the thing itself. In the wake of this autumn's hurricane, many Chelsea galleries are only now beginning to reopen. And insurance companies are reporting millions upon millions of dollars of damage. Pieces categorized as "total losses," because the damage and subsequent cost of restoration render their market value as zero, demoting them from art worth hanging on a wall down to some purgatorial space, where the item still "exists" but has lost its intrinsic value. Because these artworks aren't just trashed. They are carefully stored in warehouses, probably never to be seen again (for the time being). A clever architecture professor at Columbia curated an exhibition - that sadly appears to be finished - "displaying" many of these artworks. She put them out on dollies rather than hanging them, so as not to aestheticize the damage itself, and viewers were allowed to interact with the value-less art as much as they like. It returns us to that constant and ever-fascinating debate about what constitutes a piece's value, and what makes it Art with a capital A versus just a piece by Jeff Koons that is broken, and is no longer for sale, whether someone wants to buy it or not.
I may not be who I believe. I may not be who I am. I am not what they see. I am what I refuse.Could the most basic of human quality be found in the least recognised human thought. We are animal. We are wild- instinctive- the most basic, trying. Trying to deal with the complicated. We are stupid, so grossly thick and pervursely overrated. We know little but know best how to fool ourselves into believing we know much. Enough. That we know ourselves, our reasons, our purpose- that we are more than this. And so we try, we build to the sky and dig to the core, we read the writers and write to be read. It takes little more than surface scratch and open eye to see we are little. Not much at all. Within the great intricacies of the ticking dancing machine we are but Mickey Mouse on the watch hand. We are not vital- nothing but nothing stops without our selves. We invented it all - it exists only because we tell it too and teach it on. Real matter grows, it cuts and bleeds and heals and grows again without us. Without us all, every one. The only truth we have, the only matter that matters is that we relate. That we are all little at once. Our fleshy thumping hearts and eager skin are one but many. We understand because we are, we fear because we know we don't know, we all- the thoughtless sublime, the searching conscious, the worker and dancer a like- we are everyone. A hundred billion us. Parentless children trying to think, trying to do, to race, to learn, to feel, trying to be, trying to matter. We cumber no significance to anything significant. Not to growth, change, not to life. We dont , we do not matter at all to anything. We matter only and ever to each other.Stop and tear the structures the camouflage of significance we bear up ourselves and gift with dignity or feign. See the bones. The common drowning, the billion waving hands, calling to or cursing their maker. Forget the cheating mind, the greatest fraud of all. See the 'bones boy' see the tissue, dripping sinus, the wired flesh, see me. SEE ME- not who I am, not who you believe I am, not that that I became, that I caused, that I did, that I hurt and loved and lied. I am closer to you than you know, simpler a machine than you think. I am flawed. I have never not been thus, I was created thus and vanish as is. I hold no relevance, no gripping wind or pushing tide. I am no more than a rock, a clod of hardened dirt, I sit, like everyone, on the side of the same baking hill. I lay, like you, in the rivers bed. See yourself and then see me. We are little to all but without measure to each other.Be kind to us, be patient with our pointlessness, be unsettled, be restless be disturbed, be anything but ok with everything but be alright with each other.