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Victoria Popova (Austria) «10×10». Painting, Graphics, Photography
02.12 — 30.12.2005
Nothing is easier than to get bogged down in petty things and
good-for-nothing memories. It would be much better to remember the
few great things. For instance, a wise classical saying, a biography of a genius
worthy of an encyclopedic entry, a lavish reception where everything is
important and meaningful. Or a book that has caused a great stir, or a town one
finally manages to visit. But our memory is a philistine by nature. It takes
great pains to arrange small facts and odds and ends. With time, they get
scattered to form an incredibly vivid collage: a snail crawling up a stem; a
tube of paint resentfully huddled in a corner; thick fog hovering over
discoloured, grey grass; a wagtail fussing around; bright red patches of
poppies; colossal transparent greenish-blue icicles from your childhood. Things
you saw or read about, it does not really matter. They constitutes the memory of
life, or rather, lives that Vika Popova sorted out to make up different series:
«Traces», «A Flat», «A Park»,
«Insects», «Figures» — in all, ten series, each
consisting of ten 10×10 pieces. Here the reason and logic ends. Instead of
the expected arithmetic grid you see a disarray of pictures swarming the gallery
space. They will make you no wiser as to the artist's official, recorded life.
For example, you will never know that Victoria Popova was born in Leningrad,
went to the Secondary Art School, the Academy of Fine Arts, and to Vienna
University of Applied Arts. They will tell you nothing about her noble career of
an artist, her work in New York and San Diego, and her sojourn in Vienna.
The «10×10» project tells us about the innermost life of the
artist, her private memory. According to the author, this project is «the
bottom line, a hind view, a recycling». The idea was sudden: the artist
took a glance at her workshop and realized that she wanted to « rework,
remake, recycle herself». And she set out to make up «stories»
from scraps of paper, bits of canvas, remains of paints, coal, stubs of pencils.
The spectator may find them addle and meaningless, for the artist these small
squares are red signal posts that memory puts up along the winding road of her
life. Yet the World history of mankind is pieced out of such
«private» stories.
Olga Khoroshilova
Translate: Helena
Sorokina
Solo exhibitions:
2005- Project «10х10», «KvadraT» gallery — St. Petersburg
2005 — Project «Environment», «Artefakt/Palais Ferstl» Gallery , Vienna, Austria.
2005 — «Retrospective», Museum of modern Art, Imatra, Finland
2004 — Project «10 x 10», «Amerlinghaus» gallery, Vienna, Austria
2003 Organisation and Participation of Art exchange Commemorative
Exhibition «300 years St. Petersburg» , Vienna — St. Petersburg,
Days of Culture's Austria in St. Petersburg
2003 — Participant WUK in SOHO/Ottakring/Vienna Project «Multi-Kulti-Pyramid»
2002 — 2000 Participant internatioal Symposiums «Art in Landscape», Germany
2000 «Serafin» gallery, Solo Exhibition Painting and Graphic, Vienna, Austria
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