Exhibition: “Search for Space” – February 2008

“Search for Space”

 “Search for Space” was the title of the new exhibition at the BACTRIA Cultural Centre, which opened on the 22nd of February. In the framework of this exhibition, or should we say outside of the framework – meaning both in a physical and figurative sense – it is the first time when both the organizers and the authors, Bahrom Ismatov, Jamshed Kholikov and Elios Mamadjanov, tried to avoid the limitations of picture frames.

The expositions were arranged in three rooms – in the outside gallery, leading from the gate to the inner court of the Cultural Centre, works of Jamshed Kholikov were exhibited; in the cinema hall, video artworks were shown; but the real gem of the show was clearly the newly created exhibition space: a basement, hidden from the visitors’ sight and which till the present day was only used as storage. In its  two small rooms with low ceilings, Bahrom Ismatov and Elios Mamadjanov exhibited their paintings.

The exhibition was announced as an exposition of contemporary art works in the media of photo art, video art and conceptual paintings. Jamshed Kholikov presented his photo art works done under the project “Starter”(2005), which introduced “flatness” as a new artistic space in photography. Works, like the “Girl on Ball”, “Morning Stroll”, “Goalkeeper” and “Morning Tea” evoked the admiration of most visitors, who assumed that the arrangements of the figures were done with the help of photomontage. However the originality of these photos lies quite in the opposite – the artist did not use photomontage, but all the works are staged, where the photos were taken of the horizontally situated objects from above.

The video retrospective, shown in the cinema room, included both older and new works. The exhibition opening gave opportunity for new productions, like “Hotel California” of the artistic group “Southern Direction” a premier showing – a kind of mocking admiration of Western culture, which lately has become very popular among young people. The authors, using a skilful combination of staged and documentary frames, is seeking to show all the nonsense of blind copying  in creative works, as well as in every day life and at the same time to show a hypnotizing depth of traditional culture of any ethnicity. In the video, Tajik children are amazed by the sounds of an instrument, which they have never heard, chasing a French bagpipe player who is walking on a dusty road. 

The exposition of artworks in the basement (or ART-Podval, as the organizers of the exhibition call the space) undoubtedly shocked the visiting public.

It was unusual to experience that spite of the wetness and tightness of the space it still felt cozy, accentuated by soft lights and with contemporary music corresponding to the exhibited artworks.

Conceptual painting is a style applied by both Bahrom Ismatov and by Elios Mamadjanov. Bahrom’s paintings strike us with their vivid colors. The artist is not afraid of using bright colors and mixing them in an experimental way.

Six canvases with chaotically smeared white paint over them, are the works of Elios, which provoked ambiguous feelings from visitors. The question arises – is it a painting at all? It is difficult to define its genre; some call it installation, some call it conceptual project. In the work, the artist appears as a co-author to the great eastern poet, Rumi, whose outstanding poetry dealing with people’s constant search of God around themselves and never within their own hearts, are drawn on the canvases with thin pencil and crossed over with rough movements of white paint. Only the very observant and responsive visitors sensed that this work has nothing to do with paintings as such, rather it is the unraveling (or possible, the disguising) of very deep and discreet feelings of the artist.  

(Georgy Mamedov – program director)