Upon arrival in Paris I was given a list of three pages of small print with museums and city galleries, which can be visited by pass. I always take the list as a kind of guide to action, and began to visit one by one, without departing from the sequence, I am sure that this list was compiled by competent French comrades. Museum after museum, line after line, in the end I realized that almost the only place where there is no art in the museum are the restrooms and washstands— the museum area does not extend there, or rather it is sterile with art space. After visiting all the museums and, respectively, all these washroom toilet spaces, I realized that the era has come, not even of liquid soap, but of foamy soap, not to mention hard soap. It's funny, but you can no longer touch anything but water. Contact with water is an unavoidable interaction option. It's about the same as the «do not touch» signs in museum exhibits — visual contact when viewing works of art. When there are a lot of museums this approach is tiring — I decided to introduce a small contact element in the form of «forest berries» toilet soap, brought as a reserve. Semyon Motolyanets
I do not understand anything in contemporary art, and in classical art too. At first I wanted to hide this fact, but then I decided to use it in the title of the exhibition. When you start any project, you build a plan that you will follow. When choosing a language and a theme, one realizes that by choosing one thing, there will be something left out of the project that will have to be abandoned. This element of choice is a difficult and very important task for every writer. Project thinking reduces one's work to narrow cases, because narrowing the topic and specificity of the task helps one achieve success in a certain area, but at the same time instrumentalizes us, turns us into a function and creates one-dimensionality. It is impossible to embrace the immensity, but this is what one craves, one does not want to ground one's dreams, especially in our time - a time that dictates rationality in the name of survival. This exhibition is built from observations on the internal methodology of work in the studio. I want to do everything without abandoning any findings, without preferring the media, without choosing from them priority models, because according to my observations in this choice lies self-censorship, degenerating into replicativeness. Personality or other techniques that allow me to work with different languages simultaneously do not interest me in this case. I like to do several projects in parallel, which complement each other - it is a construction of displacement, a work with peripheral ideas, although it is impossible to fully understand who plays the secondary roles in this performance. The project is constructed out of a reliance on the methodology of dispersed attention and a rejection of the «artist as an art production machine» model of work. Understanding all the weaknesses of this approach to the construction of the exhibition, I called on the help of four curators, who lead exclusively in one direction of the exhibition, without working with the overall story, in this case not so important. The curators help not to build a hierarchy of values in this approach. More often than not, the curator is the conductor in collective exhibitions where individual works have the opportunity to perform in a more complex structure, a project. In this same project, we collaborate with curators from a slightly different angle - it is in a sense an antipersonal exhibition, where the curator works with a fragment of the exhibition. The aim is not to stratify ourselves and not to arrive at multi-instrumentalism, but rather to try to grasp something that, one way or another, sooner or later, will have to be abandoned. Conditions and possibilities very sharply dictate the method of work for any artist. I hope that each of the stated curators, in interaction with me, will help me find that implicit conclusion that will summarize the method of the elements of the exhibition and indicate where the «common» is. The conclusion may lead to a certain rejection, and consequently to a purification of the working method, because reception and language cannot be the artist's genuine interest according to my understanding of the artist's role as such. Language, style, and reception are important elements of the presence of the author, and at the same time, they are the boundaries of the enclosure in which their creator is flailing about. I think it is important to discover these boundaries and then break them, not in the name of expanding the field of art - that is just an empty illusion - but in the name of coming up with complicated tasks for yourself - super ideas. So as not to go into production, not to become a factory for the production of artistic products - which is what the success of the spectator's response must surely lead to. And this is rather a hindrance to both the lauded ability to work, and extreme efficiency, and all the other attributes of a prolific and creative individual. What each of the curators will see, whether such a working scheme will emerge, it is hard to predict, but hopefully we will see differences in the way we understand art. I am here, in a certain sense, a «slippery man», unwilling to be defined, unwilling to make a choice. Because, in my opinion, there has to be some social meaning in the work of the artist, an opportunity to be an agent of change in the world around us, and if that doesn't open up, then it's time to look. Basically, what I understand is that I am disoriented in finding a methodology for creating art that suits me as an organic form or language. So why can't this dispersion be the leitmotif of the exhibition? Semyon Motolyanets
«Temporary marking of public/personal space with yellow paint». On June 14, Thursday, at 19.00 in the Gallery of Space KH will open an exhibition of Semen Motolyants.This exhibition continues the tradition of «summer» Brest exhibitions of the artist - living and working in St. Petersburg, Semen Motolyants comes to his hometown in the summer and regularly introduces Brest residents with fresh creative developments. The central block of the exposition, Temporary Marking of Pub/Personal Space with Yellow Paint, is a series of 6 relief panels painted with yellow road paint and complemented with photos of Brest landscapes of little importance, but biographically significant to Motolyanets, painted with the same paint, created especially for the Brest exhibition. The exhibition will also include works from the artist's earlier projects («Antifortuny», documentation of selected performances). The curator of the exhibition is Lizaveta Mikhalchuk.
My interest in the project is dictated by an emotional and intuitive sense of place and region. The dormitories on Maria Dragan Street revealed a problem with the common - here I am talking about communal washbasins. The hostel system is not perfect and was created as a transitional phase of fixation in the city in the workplace. Realizing that it is fundamentally impossible to help with these housing problems of the people living here, I decided to create an object, taken outside the dormitory, but broadcasting the theme of communal washing in public space. Outdoor washing, the expansion of personal space, due to the never-ending desire during the heat of the day to get into the water, or at least wash. Observations have shown that in unusual places you can find homemade sinks from plastic bottles - their simplicity and function creates a new sense of space. Based on what I saw, I decided to take the outdoor washbasin to a new level. To do this, I created a mobile object for public water procedures using water and a wide variety of soaps. As an element of small architecture, the mobile washstand should be an accent on the street, to attract the attention of residents, spectators, and participants in a kind of performative action. In this project, the plastic for me is as important as the social impact. That's why I chose the language of «temporary domestic improvement», examples of which can be seen everywhere in Chisinau. There is a potential in this language for transferring to the field of contemporary art, as well as a bridge for understanding among mass viewers. Friends, wash your hands before you eat. Semyon Motolyanets