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Ludmila Belova (St Petersburg).
Video installation On 24 January 2007, a video installation by Petersburg artist Ludmila Belova re was presented to the public in the exhibition hall of the State Hermitage's Youth Education Center. The event was part of the program entitled Class. Topical Art. Belova is well known for her work in the field of digital art. He has participated in many museum projects in the field of media art. The artist made her debut in ceramics but in the mid- 1990s she turned to topical art. In1994, she took part in the international symposium on Signs in Landscape (Litzen-Berlin) and many will remember her installation on Lake Suzdal during the Plot show - those white plaster hands towering over the water. In 2000, she was named Russia's first media artist for her work entitled A Compulsory View, which won the ZKM Prize at the world's largest center of new technologies in Karslruhe (Germany). The video presented by the master not only conveys the atmosphere of a special Room N but takes us over to the other side of the mirror; museum spectators look at a painting and the painting looks at the spectator. The artist raises the question of the psychological reality of the world of art, which is, perhaps, more important than the everyday world. Marina Kolkobskaya, director of the St Petersburg branch of the State Center of Modern Art, says the following about Ludmila Belova: "Ludmila Belova is concerned with the simple and eternal question that has agitated artists in every age: what do we actually see in fact? How do you depict this? Linear perspective, orthogonal and reverse... Modeling space in the Poussin and Cezanne manner... Rembrandt's chiaroscuro and the spots of color of the Divisionists (Pointilists)...The suffering of Petrov-Vodkin and the fantasies of the Dadaists... All of this (and we cannot list it all) is motivated by a desire to break through to reality. What kind? The one we see? Or some other reality that we think we see? The one we remember or ought to remember? The reality of what is located somewhere deep inside and is seemingly not noticed? Or the obvious things lying on the surface that are so plain to see that we ignore them? You cannot convey everything. The artist should make his choice, build up his system of priorities and create his pictorial language. Ludmila Belova is interested in information noise. Rubbish. Interference. The obligatory foreshortening and engaged points of view. What customarily is not noticed, what generally is not talked about, what remains outside the scope of criticism as if it is something anti-artistic, senseless and accidental - but which occupies 90% of what we see, hear and know. When they are closely examined, the somewhat cool and rationalistic works of Ludmila Belova become terrifying. Modern man (or man in general?) turns out to be a receiver-broadcaster of information, most of which he doesn't need, surrogates, false and, very likely, harmful. What do we ourselves consist of? What do we have in our heads? How do you catch amidst the stream of waste the truth that is there (ought to be there)? How do you perceive in the information stream flowing through your own brain, your own vital and precious thoughts and feelings: How do you find Room N in the Hermitage?" Ludmila Belova: "My works are being shown in rooms of the Hermitage's Youth Education Center located in the General Staff Building, with entrance from the side of the Moika River Embankment. In regard to the main rooms of the Hermitage, these are, generally speaking, Room N. Some few people know where this is... I recall my impressions of the Hermitage. The Hermitage is generally famous for the way you can get lost there and not find very easily the place where your favorite painting is hanging. First you have to get lost and see a lot of other things, get tired, lose all your ability of perception and, finally, when you are standing before the wished-for masterpiece, you enjoy glancing at it from behind the backs and heads of similarly worn out peers... Everything is retained in your memory: both what is necessary and what is unnecessary - fragments of a painting, huge chandeliers floating over your head, conversations of a girl on a mobile phone who is walking ahead, the buzz of a multilingual crowd, the doors, the staircases, the enfilades, discussions of their pension by the lady custodians seated in the corners, the loud voices of tour guides, the clicking of heels on the parquet floors... Each of us has in his memory his own Hermitage, his Room N. In my recollections of the Hermitage from childhood I clearly see the faceted rose-colored glass of a door handle which overshadowed everything I saw, it was so brilliant, and you could stretch up to reach it... I was then 5 years old." On 27 January, at 18.00 o'clock, Ludmila Belova will conduct a master class in the Youth Education Center of the State Hermitage for university students who are members of the creative sections of the Hermitage Student Club. The exhibition will run until 4 February 2007. Youth Education Center of the Hermitage Closed Mondays |
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Copyright
© 2006 State Hermitage Museum |
