Yelena Vorobyeva & Viktor Vorobyev

VIP (VERY IMPORTANT PERSONS)

Our almost maniacal aspiration for turning some common routine thing into an art object one can explain as a simple “sense of fairness”. Any expression of human being demands fair attitude to itself (not only heroic one, as it usually does). It results in careful attitude towards the small articles of everyday life. Any thing deserves memorial in case we look at it in the context of history. We should say that our Central Asia mentality is peculiar in the attitude towards the things as the gifts of nature. 
The product of nature but not the product of high technologies is closer to our non-western heart.
Of course, “hi-tech” deeply imbued our life and everyone treasures his/her personal elaborate mobile Samsung, camera Sony and even maybe off-road Lexus. But all these objects of ordinary longing are created far away from here and not by us like some exotic fruits and are perceived as the gifts of nature as well.  

Everything becomes rubbish, everything is subject to utilization, turns into nothing but a stone has some chance to remain for a couple of million years on the planet. After all the millions of years had passed before an object of nature became an object of art at an artist’s will.
The series “Petrifactions” is something like restoration of historic fairness by way of “immortalization” of consumer goods. A sculpture nearly not-made-by-hands meets our historic notion of “ideal”. One would never see here the plastic signs of European academic education. Contemplating a petrified iron, a bulb or a tea-pot, one is like transferred oneself to the museum of the future where the exhibits are displayed – the witnesses of our present. 

We have never tried to escape from the decision of the modernist problems - they’re just interesting for us. My painting and Viktor’s sculptures are all about it. The fuss over the material, either stones or paints, gives birth to the creative energy. Our notions of aesthetics are impossible without this energy. The search of specific forms gives rise to the heap of metaphors. And the objects under our attention – “the Bearers of Essence” - in different ways demonstrate themselves in various “media” – pictures, sculptures, photos etc.

In general, the consumer goods are Very Important Persons – the one living in this global “world of consumption” cannot help assenting to it.  And it’s still unclear – whether the man consumes the product or the product consumes the man. A portrait close-up in our works gives an opportunity to peer at the character of these “persons”.

Yelena Vorobyeva

Translated by Anastasia Ritum

exhibition: main hall

exhibition: small hall

works of various periods

artists’ bio