See You
MishMash group. Be Softer! 2008. Installation. Wood, organic glass, stones, wool
MishMash group. Stone Garden. "Take care, look out". 2010. Installation. Stones, car headlights, camera, video projection
MishMash group. Stone Garden. "Take care, look out". 2010. Installation. Stones, car headlights, camera, video projection
Moscow, 24.12.2011—25.01.2012
exhibition is over
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The Exhibition Project “SEE YOU”, created by the MishMash Group (Maria Sumnina and Mikhail Leikin), includes two installations made with artificial and natural stones, which form polysemantic and multilayered, in the exact sense of the word, structures. “Stones – unlike human beings, are rather dead than alive, but at the same time they have an individual character and a personal biography lasting for millions of years: from lava flowing to the surface or biological remains sinking to the bottom of the world ocean to each one of them being smoothed by the waves of artificial water reservoirs. Compared with a biography of a stone, that of a human individual is a moment, filled with vanity, ambitions and emotions”.
For the press
The Installation “Be Softer. Be Harder”, shown for the first time at the exhibition “Russian Dreams” in Miami, in 2008, is made of wooden boxes with small cells, each one of them containing a stone in a knitted woolen sock lying on a piece of cotton wool. The “soft” handmade clothing of the “heavy” natural stones, kept in a rigid wooden frame, creates a continuous game involving different materials, and their contraposition, based on their formal and associative characteristics:
…handicraft or art?
instrument or object?
necessary or useless?
serious or lighthearted?
valuable or priceless?
fragmentary or plural?
disperse or collect?
in the hand or in the bosom?
…
Another work made of stone (this time artificial) is the installation “Stone Garden”. Eastern art, with its focus on contemplation and meditation, inspired MishMash on many occasions to create art-objects and architectural projects. The “Stone Garden” is something that not only supposes contemplation, but also, being interactive, takes into account the viewer’s role in forming the final image. The artificial stones with car headlights inside are arranged in accordance with the principles of a Japanese stone garden, and embody the Zen notion that “to fully observe all the stones is only possible when a person is soaring in the air above the garden and looks at it from above – all the stones may be seen by only those, who have ‘attained enlightenment’”…
“These two works, - the artists say, - are about ambivalence, about movement and stability, about calm and alarm, about aggression and stagnation and about balance. About how relative is internal and external control in the times of total control”.
