Kyiv. Ya Gallery

Croquis

Anna Zvyagintseva, Sergiy Zvyagintsev

22.01.2020 – 17.02.2020

The exhibition project Croquis is Anna and Serhii Zviahintsev's polylogue with their own yet someone else's pathways, about the right to repeat these pathways, about the legitimacy of repetition. Each artist uses their own methods of appropriating these pathways. Serhii studies the fragments of life stories — pieces of the truth that he finds on the paths where his footsteps follow his father's. On the paths that have been trodden by others. Anna Zviahintseva collects her own yet someone else's pathways on maps. Cognitive mapping of her own experience of following beaten paths is overlaid on the authentic imprint of Podil district which Anna fixates together with the cartographer, and separately — with a camera.

Exhibition Kyiv Ya Gallery

Croquis:

1. a quick drawing that outlines a conceived composition.

2. a geographical sketch of a location map containing the most important elements.

Every person's experience is unique. It is about the thought we are fascinated with, the choice we think is right, the path that will probably lead us to our goal. But the things we are thinking about have been already thought by dozens of generations, the choice we are making today has been made by someone else yesterday, and the pathway we are following has been trodden by other people. Despite the fact that the elements of this matrix are always reproduced, the configurations of their combination make our experience truly ours.

The process of formation of human identity is always a dialogue with another person, formation of trust to another person. I believe those who went off the road and trod a pathwat, and I follow this pathway, I believe it to be also mine now.

The exhibition project Croquis is Anna and Serhii Zviahintsev's polylogue with their own yet someone else's pathways, about the right to repeat these pathways, about the legitimacy of repetition. Each artist uses their own methods of appropriating these pathways. Serhii studies the fragments of life stories — pieces of the truth that he finds on the paths where his footsteps follow his father's. On the paths that have been trodden by others. Anna Zviahintseva collects her own yet someone else's pathways on maps. Cognitive mapping of her own experience of following beaten paths is overlaid on the authentic imprint of Podil district which Anna fixates together with the cartographer, and separately — with a camera.

Croquis is searching for the truth through the esthetics of reproduction. Artists reproduce pathways at first in their own physical experience, then — in a quick sketch, later — integrate a pathway into the logic of their works so that a viewer could also feel it later on. Rise above the network of paths — whose paths? Has the author really followed them? Is the experience of following them is accessible? After all, is the experience of the artist who created them our own?

American researcher Fredric Jameson wrote: “If subjective experience is authentic, it cannot be the truth." When following someone else's paths, we stay ourselves — with our view, our opinion, our choice and motivation to choose this very path. The maps of our paths are the same, but they are never identical, the place of the universal truth remains empty. When following someone else's path, we create our own experience, and it is unique.

Maryna Bohush

Authors' exhibition