Sobo Gallery presents the first solo project by Maresiy Ivashchenko, [mamahuhu], in which the artist, who consistently works with photography, will showcase his latest series shot in Vladivostok. Recalling Thales' doctrine of water as the primary element of all existence, Henry Miller's wanderings between the sea and the scorched land in The Colossus of Maroussi, the endless drift of rootless Romantic poets, and the notorious myth of the coastal city as the edge of the universe, Maresiy Ivashchenko transposes all of this into the realm of kitsch clichés from contemporary pop culture. Vladivostok, as the setting of the series, emerges as a space inhabited by hermits, poets, spirited retired sailors, exiles, and outlaws — heroes of the romantic myth of searching for meaning and place in the world.
The artist’s works reflect the specific perception of mass culture, counterfeits, and chance occurrences, creating an atmosphere of irony and anxious uncertainty characteristic of contemporary reality.
Romantic Poets from Byron to Pushkin Often Depicted the Seaside Town as One of the Few Places Where a Solitary Conversation Between Man and Nature, and Man and Himself, Is Possible. The sea or ocean—a symbol of freedom and infinity—draws people to itself and grants them the opportunity, far from the urban bustle, to reflect on fate, the cosmos, and death. Hence the seaside town beckons hermits, sages, poets, exiles, and outlaws.
With the development of the tourism industry in Europe during the nineteenth century, the romantic image of an "escape to the sea" became a commodity and a postcard picture, while the seaside town transformed into a resort—a space of simulation. Architecture made from cheap, mass-produced materials, souvenirs imitating traditional crafts, popular music grown out of folk song—all of this is kitsch makeup, a mask that the resort dons to arouse desire in the traveler, to seduce him, and to pick his pocket.
Modernity is one vast resort, and all modern people are tourists. Holders of a "strong" passport can afford physical travel (a journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway to Vladivostok remains one of the most popular tourist adventures for foreigners in Russia), while others content themselves with trips from the "remote seaside province" to the metropolis. But regardless of geography, most modern cities increasingly resemble coastal holiday destinations—both for natural reasons (global warming) and artificial ones (global capitalism). The design code of this global resort is based on the sentimental ornamentation of everything and everyone, allowing one to ignore, for as long as possible, the fact that the ocean's water is poisoned.
Poisoned water is kitsch. And it is utterly natural and omnipresent. It can be likened to the primordial element, the arche of ancient Greek natural philosophy. The place of Thales, who held water to be the origin of all things, has been taken by Clement Greenberg, who called kitsch "the first universal culture in history." Kitsch envelops everything, leaving nothing ugly. Everything is worthy of being beautiful. The sea cucumber is adorned with a starfish, the grandmother with face paint, the caviar with edible gold. Forty percent of the world's oceans (that which so entices tourists to embark on long journeys) is not polluted—it, too, is adorned. Oil spills are beauty marks on the face of the capitalist planet. Even the iron is embellished with rhinestones and capable of arousing desire—and not only in humans. The phone, glancing at the curves of the back massager, desires to possess it. Global capitalist matter is so abundant with desire that objects, people, and other biological species want each other in equal measure. Libido, like water, flows everywhere, so everyone learns makeup and seduction from an early age. Skin, rubber, and mucus—any matter can be beautified.
Dressed in their frames, the photographs adorn the image of the exhibition's protagonist—the boundless ocean (the ocean of kitsch, the ocean of desire). These images can be likened to pearls dredged from its depths, and Mareciy Ivashchenko himself to a camp fisherman. He humbly angles in water iridescent with gasoline and contents himself with modest catches. In the end, his photographs do not conceal the plague beneath the luxury of the feast; they hyperbolize it, thereby making both the plague and the feast larger, more visible, more grotesque. Face paint will not make an old woman more attractive, and edible gold will not make caviar tastier. But deliberate exaggeration and artificiality allow us to see the universal weakness in the face of the ocean.
Yet without falling into the sin of didacticism or messianism, Mareciy Ivashchenko also makes himself a hero of the world he has constructed. Whether a saint making the sign of the cross, or a holy fool in a swim cap instead of a tinfoil hat, he hears the murmuring of capitalism, he heeds the language of the Absolute in order to impart to us truths overheard from the elements. This dangerous degree of contact with the ocean—entirely in the spirit of Romanticism—allows the artist to fish out bizarre shells and, through artistic manipulations, extract pearls from them.
What are we to do with these camp pearls? Buy them and adorn our homes with them, turn away in boredom, or drop them into acid and drink them, as especially wealthy Europeans once did (or perhaps drop them into the acid of art criticism)? The exhibition offers no answer, for fishing is as natural to the fisherman as swimming is to the fish. Neither questions the meaning of their existence (in times of "liquid" modernity, the question of purpose is not even posed—you simply "flow into" the circumstances offered by the times and try to derive pleasure)…
All that remains for us is to wait: either global warming will dry up the ocean and all the fish will perish, or our diet will change and the fisherman will have to find a new profession. The latter option, however, invites doubt. It is no coincidence that Mareciy came to grandmother Sobo: it was in Japan that the mass cultivation of artificial pearls first began. The kind old lady will teach anyone the ancient craft.
— Dmitry Belkin
