01.05.2021 — 27.05.2021
Solo show
VMPDI, Moscow
Curator Alina Saprykina
“Visiting a fairy tale” – an exhibition with graffiti techniques applied to traditional art, took place at the Russian Museum of Decorative Arts in conjunction with DINAMIKA ENTERPRISE.
The exhibition by Egor Giwe (GIWE) was the first artist’s personal museum show. As an artist and graffiti artist, GIWE formed at the turn of the 1990s and 2000s. Today his activity in a number of anonymous graffiti teams allows us to consider his work a significant milestone in the history of Russian contemporary art.
The exposition is based on various series of objects created by Egor Giwe over the course of 5 years. In his work, he mainly uses everyday interior items familiar to the Russian gaze: Ivanovo tapestries, Zhostovo trays and plates from the imperial porcelain factory. The plots on all items are extremely traditional: lyrical landscapes or scenes from Russian folk tales. However, a close look at the surface of objects can reveal barely noticeable drawings applied on top of the original plots. Through these delicate interventions in an uncomplicated plot, the artist makes an attempt to introduce a new, modern fairy-tale hero invented by him into the fabric of traditional figurative rows.
From scene to scene, the protagonist meets the circumstances of the modern fairy-tale world: expensive cars and attributes of a successful city life are circling around him, and his body is made of dazzlingly shining crystals – “a fabulous imitation of diamonds” in the artist’s interpretation. Colliding tradition and modernity, high and low, eternal and momentary, Egor Giwe, interpreting fairy tales familiar from childhood, seeks to acquire new values and find the artist’s place in their system.
Alina Saprykina
