Anya Zholud

Anya Zholud’s metal art objects live on the borderline between our concepts of graphic art and sculpture, flat plane and volume, presence and absence. Working on her metal structures, it is as if the artist has “flayed” these objects in both the formal and the conceptual sense, cleansing them, and in the process setting their innermost essence free. Each of these works might be interpreted as a spatial incarnation of the “idea” behind the object.

In Universal Picture Zholud goes even further, getting at the very structure of the picture’s idea. Not only does this work straddle the cusp between the two extremes, but it is also a manifestation of that borderline, eluding all definition. The very concept of “picture” is transcending the boundaries of the object world, apostrophizing our mental notion of a work of art as an immaterial entity. But as it itself is a material picture, although one that merely points to the idea of a picture, it both is a work of art and at the same time lays the ground for a work of art.

The asceticism of this exhibition underscores the elusive yet ever-present notion of what makes a work of art. As yet incapable of giving this notion a full and final definition, each work and every exhibition, in one way or another, highlights one or more aspects of the sphere of art, but rarely in an overt way. This exhibition places the viewer face-to-face with the concept of “picture” and the concept of art. Anna Zholud’s work serves as a tool, litmus paper, or even a kind of microscope, allowing us to see what normally evades the human eye.

To a great extent, art gives us a special kind of vision; it is an optical device that lets us contemplate the world and our own life from a novel perspective. Shaking off all that is unnecessary, Universal Picture is just such an optical apparatus for seeing things differently.

Kirill Eltsov