The art mechanisms exhibition will introduce Vitebsk residents to the fashionable trend in contemporary art, scrap art

July 8, Vitebsk / Olga Bogacheva - BELTA /. The International Guild of Masters has brought the "Movement of Fantasies" exhibition of art mechanisms to festival Vitebsk. It opened today at the Vitebsk Regional Museum of Local Lore, as reported to BELTA correspondent by the guild's president, the founder of Russia's first miniature museum "Russian Lefty," Tatyana Kovsha. According to her, the exhibition includes 68 exhibits, which essentially comprise two expositions of works by professional masters of the St. Petersburg direction of scrap art, or trash. Trash (English "trash," literally "garbage") is a direction in contemporary art characterized by declarative secondary use. One of the translations of the English word "scrap" means scrap metal, waste material, or a used item. The magical, creative transformation of once-used and discarded items into art objects is the essence of scrap art. The first exposition includes works by professional artists Tatyana Shubina and Olga Ardovskaya. Through the artists' imagination, parts of worn-out cars, mechanisms, and kitchen utensils (nuts, lids, wheels, spoons, colanders, screws, brushes, faucets, speedometers, springs, etc.) have found new life as unusual art objects. The bizarre dogs, beetles, insects, siren-birds, fish, horses, and human figures presented at the exhibition evoke associations with discarded items and scrap metal only upon closer inspection, when the surprised viewer suddenly realizes that the goat's body is made from an old sewing machine, and the rocking horse's tail is nothing more than a brush. Each exhibit is a true work of art. Some works incorporate mechanical elements: birds or insects flap their wings, nod their heads, or move their limbs; in other works, doors open, and lanterns can be lit, etc. For example, a pigeon has just eaten a spider, which can be found by opening a secret door on the bird's belly. No less amazing is the exposition of works by one of St. Petersburg's most original artists, Igor Ivanov, titled "Fish-Mechanics," dedicated to Atlantis. In his interpretation, Atlantis is rendered in an industrial style, submerged in the waters of a blue ocean and surrounded by metallic fish that swim over modern metropolises and ancient civilizations. Thus, creative experiments with scrap metal turn into iron objects, ironic and brutal, visual and competent manifestations of the subtle paradoxes of new aesthetics. Expanding the boundaries of contemporary art, the St. Petersburg artists compel us to re-evaluate what our consciousness habitually defines as "reality." According to Tatyana Kovsha, the exhibition will undoubtedly become a significant event in the city's cultural life. It will run until July 16. -0-