Olga Chernysheva – Keeping Sight
For the 2014 collection intervention, the M HKA invited the internationally renowned Russian artist Olga Chernysheva (born in 1962, Moscow) to investigate the collection and develop a response to it. The M HKA acquired a major new work by her, the video installation Screens (2013), which, together with her audiovisual work, photos and drawings, was on display at the exhibition.
Chernysheva is a leading name from the Moscow generation emerging in the 90s who made a name for herself during a period of great political and cultural changes, which were, however, partly determined by the difficult reforms of the Soviet system and the economic problems that affected a large part of the population. Her work in different media - including very short essays which she combines with still or moving images - is based on a close observation of the reality around her.
Olga Chernysheva continues the long Russian tradition of social realism (very different form Socialist Realism, the official artistic doctrine of the former Soviet Union) and of art as a kind of critical and compassionate narrative. Her work is formally sophisticated, subtle and humorous.
Items
‘Emission – Réception’ reflects on suspicion, communication, interaction, transmission an reception of images and is even so about how messages are sent (through television) and received when easily manipulated by the power of the political institutions during the Franco-period in Spain.
For the work Windows (2007) Chernysheva was spying on her neighbours, at night, from the window of her own apartment. They are not aware that they are becoming the subject of an artwork. These 16 recordings are presented on wall-mounted iPads, at a great height. In this way we can spy through the artists eyes.