May/ June 2004. 


Marta and Slava


A dream in which you own knees seem oversized holds out the prospect of luck in the near future”.  Interpreting dreams always was a difficult undertaking. Symbols cross bridges of metaphors in surreal rooms, ultimately aimed at saying something worthwhile about so-called real life. However, the prosaic retranslation of the complex image of a dream to create the simple essence of an alleged meaning becomes all the more absurd. “A garden hose seen in your dream is a symbol of your literary talents and your future success in this field.” Sentences like these in the  “Dream Interpretation Handbook” simply lack all the atmospheric elements and three-dimensional images which, on the basis of banality bordering on the absurd, create the very complex type of structure that actually can tell us something about us and our lives. Things become even more absurd when the pictures for the sentences merely illustrate the sentences and no longer capture the dreams. Slava Shevelenko's pictures for the “Dream Interpretation Handbook” are not based on fantasy. Moreover he draws on everyday occurrences, practicability characterised by linear logic, which we use to go through the world without having to take detours. What you see is what you get. He illustrates “If you dream that you are holding a hammer, you should consider your relations to other people. Maybe you're a bit too intrusive” by depicting two stone-faced men with a hammer.    

Shevelenko illustrates the dream interpretations with a stoic happy-go-lucky attitude.  In doing so he bypasses the interlinking of motifs and symbols, levels of reality and meaning, which characterises dreams. Strangely enough this results in displacement. Levels of meaning with greater depth that one normally expects to find are completely lacking from his prosaic implementation. As a result the pictures are rendered absurd. Interpreting dreams is the art of interpreting images, not facts. Consequently it is ideal for reflecting art. Art is not based on the factuality or the unequivocal nature of images, moreover on their variability and ambiguity. This distinguishes it from illustrations, which merely render the facts demonstrative without removing them from the causal thought, and consequently opening other contexts.

However Slava Shevelenko and Marta Volkova make use of unorthodox methods to approach these other contexts. Instead of creating artificially artistic contexts in the pictures by way of surreal interlinking, they take their material at face value. While Shevelenko reduces the dream interpretations to motifs, and consistently portrays them in an everyday setting, Volkova develops the motifs until they collide in the picture, and consequently produce constellations that strike one as actually being surreal. “Treasure Island”, for example, shows the back of a female reclining nude in front of a Daliesque bay where two road sweepers make a futile effort to clean the sand. In this respect it is really quite consistent to link sand with grime, and place road sweepers on a bay on the basis of this logic. The lower area of the picture contains a colourful row of jellies like a commentary on the Rubenesque curves of the bare back: an auspicious land of milk and honey in which the classic motif of a naked woman's back is placed in a playful context that differs fundamentally from the content of high art. This prosaic suggestion has a particularly absurd effect against the backdrop of quotes of classic European art motifs and the Daliesque dream landscape containing a clock face. As in the case of Shevelenko's dream illustrations, here one also expects ceremonial respect for the classic European art motifs, and a surrealistic beseeching of the subconscious, on the basis of the context alone. In contrast one sees playful associations and consistently thought through actions that equally undermine the surrealistic symbolic thought and the causal-oriented world order.

In another picture by Marta Volkova, “About a girl and her habits”, a female nude, whose bare back is in full view, uses a pair of binoculars to look out to sea, which is hanging on the wall as a poster. A nearby bucket creates the impression that she is looking through a recently cleaned window. Each action is logical in itself. Looking out to sea suggests looking through the window, which is supported by the bucket. The female nude, which occurs in high art in calm self-sufficiency and is accorded minor legitimate content in the form of mythical or biblical stories, is torn away from this self-sufficiency and incorporated in an “appropriate” action setting. The otherwise rigid pose is reinterpreted as customary action. At the same time the nude creates the impression of a “picture-in-picture” like a poster hanging in front of colourful wallpaper, referring to its iconic status in classic European art's treasured pictures. Furthermore this “picture-in-picture” also creates the impression of a commentary on art's status that overrides all causal links. It is art that creates freedom of movement  and with it the circle closes.

The freedom of movement that Marta Volkova and Slava Shevelenko create with their pictures does not amount to complex surrealistic and artificial results. They are results based on reality. Pictures emerge that demonstrate the limits of thought characterised by linear logic because both consistently think over their ideas thoroughly, make actions out of poses and take motifs at face value. Their artistic approach reminds one of the uncomplicated methods children adopt to do things their own way. Consequently one becomes aware of the contradictory nature of the grown up's world in its failure to break away from causal thought. Such immediacy is entirely logical in its own way, and consequently gives rise to space for fantasy that is not considered irrational. Fantasy means freedom to move in space that not only allows for imagination but also action. And this fantasy is usually brought down by logic that is supposedly governed by the so-called world order.

Volkova and Shevelenko have retained some of this childish candour, its  original association and power to be consistent. This is also reflected in the way cultural products are handled. As Russian-born artists, they appear to perceive the two distinct forms of cultural representation in the west  advertising and high art  with great objectivity and, at the same time, great criticism based on their own propaganda-driven culture. However, they approach these two forms in the strictly childish manner that separates them not only from a pronounced media- or socio-critical approach, but also from Sots Art, the refreshing and irreverent utilisation of the post-socialist motley collection of pictures following the disappearance of the ideological ballast. Marta Volkova and Slava Shevelenko take the world's supposed order structure to its limits using its own, completely logical means  not from the outside but from within.

Veronika Schöne