"This Apple" exhibition

February 8 - March 17, 2019
MMOMA, GOGOLEVSKY 10

Curator: Antonina Trubitsyna
Curator of the MMOMA Program for Support to Young Artists: Daria Kamyshnikova

This apple" is an exhibition about a person's relationship with his or her body.

«The gaze – understood as both an actual artistic experience and an outcome of the academic tradition - is a subject of the series which I began in 2015. I draw myself from different perspectives using only my own eyes. I don't use a photo camera or mirrors. The experience of posing has much influenced the sketches. I try to grasp the details during the process of watching and drawing at the same time and then summarize observations on canvas.» Alyona describes her method.

Contemplating, shaping, refining. Sensation, vision, a gaze, the body. A view point, balance, gravity, comprehension. All these concepts make up the reference points that one can reflect on while walking around the exhibition. They are all paradoxically connected by the idea of apple.

●In essence, Alyona's works are the two-dimensional upside down images that are created on the retina and then are turned into a three-dimensional image by our brain.

●In the process of drawing the search for the position both comfortable for posing and interesting as a subject is subordinate to gravity, which due to the legend about the discovery of Newton's law of universal gravitation is associated with an apple. Gravity is the elusive sensation that Alyona is trying to capture and convey in her works.

●The Biblical apple led people to gain awareness of their physicality and separateness from the whole, for the first time raising the question of personal boundaries.

The one who is looked at is the artist observing her bodily sensations. An important addition to the perception of the works is that the viewer starts to unconsciously imitate the artist's body positions. The same happens when we look at sculptures or dancing figures. One can experience it by striking the poses suggested by the artist and observing one's body.

The name of the exhibition appear thanks to poem by Mikhail Gronas:

today I was deprived of my body:
January
it glistened instead of me:
January
put your hand down
feel
the eyeball:
lies
on the fundus
for me
for me
this eyeball
lies
for me
dive down to get it
bring me back to me
dive down to get it
bring me back to me
dive down to bring me back to me
feel