CONFERENCE OF THE BIRDS

Press release

From November 17 to December 11 the Moscow contemporary art gallery ASKERI GALLERY will host an exhibition of the Russian artist Masha Rudenko - "Conference of the birds". The project "Conference of the birds" is a multimedia space that combines painting, collage, video, fashion and NFT. The leitmotif of the exhibition is the idea of body language, a concept extrapolated by the artist from the narrow formulation of "tactility" to the other senses: vision, hearing, and even the so-called virtual corporeality. The name of the project is a reference to the classic poem by the Sufi poet and philosopher Attar. After realizing that they have no king, the birds set out in search of one. They traverse seven valleys, symbolizing various feelings, and end up at a lake where they find nothing but their reflections on the water surface. So they realize that only they can control themselves and each other by joining together as a pack. Those who look at the world realistically and know the price of their fantasies do not need a king. Masha Rudenko's world is a world of reflections and mirrors in which you can comprehend your true self. The body is our main reflection, as the true expression of corporeality is based on the totality of other sensations. That is why, looking at the nude in the artist's works, one can instantly consider its condition and the idea contained in the image. Masha Rudenko's paintings are primarily self-portraits, with the nature depicted on them becoming a kind of universal code, a kind of hieroglyph, a kind of symbol. Thus, images referring to the fashion industry remind us that this sphere reads only the superficial meaning of corporeality. At the same time, the same body can become a real encyclopedia of sensuality and the key to self-knowledge and adequate self-perception. The aesthetics of the body in the paintings of Masha Rudenko proclaims a new language of the body, a new interpretation of corporeality, based primarily on immersion in one's own self and concentration on one's own feelings. In the video work Mockingbird (2022) various images are projected onto the artist's body: words, gestures, and images. In this way Rudenko raises the theme of the conflict between a person's real experiences and other people's desires, and the fantasies that the outside world tries to instill in him. "Mockingbird" shows that every reflection has many other reflections and dimensions. The art helps to distinguish illusory space from real space and organize a common field for interaction - "bird talk" in the real here and now. NFT based on the video work Mockingbird found its reflection in a virtual space on the Super Rare platform at the Decentral Art Pavilion in Venice. The large-scale series of works is a real psychological study. ASKERI GALLERY is proud to announce that several paintings from "Conference of the Birds" series are exhibited at ART BASEL MIAMI ART FAIR in Miami, USA. For us this is a sign of the relevance of the theme of the search for reflection. Because in the modern world full of distortions and imaginary ideals pure reflection and true self-knowledge become a real value. (text author: Evgenia Suslova)

Artists