Go – Slava Ptrk

Go / Forward

Solo show in 11.12 Gallery, Winzavod, Moscow.

25 January – 27 February 2022

With the development of civilization, all spheres of human life acquired regulation: religion, science, art, everyday life – the human experience was structured in canons, laws and rules. Сharters, norms, instructions and signs explain, control and direct our life, its development and movement from the world order to the relations between people. Our submission or disobedience to them affects our fate and the course of history. Over time, however, the “regulators” change and transform: explanations of reality evolve from the natural phenomena to the anthropomorphic form of gods, from polytheism to monotheism, from the dominance of religious consciousness to atheistic ideologies; laws are enacted and repealed depending on philosophical, cultural, economic and geopolitical situations. The “social contract” fixes the statuses of controlling and obeying, but the change of paradigms, persons and roles imply eternal change, modulation, development, movement.

Slava Ptrk’s «Go» project explores the movement in the extensive meaning. The elements of the urban infrastructure associated with the regulation of the people moving in space become a vivid demonstration of strict subordination to rules created and controlled by someone we do not see, someone who is not personalized, someone who is «above» us and far away from us, thereby acquiring an almost mythical status. Regardless of whether we understand the logic of these orders and rules, we are obliged to follow and comply with them. Or not? The objects of the urban environment, expressing artificial restrictions, become a vivid representation of the mechanisms of manipulation of society. The symbols of the infrastructure are even more ancient: banners or idols.

The exposition traces the relationship between God (or gods) and man at different stages of history. The transition from paganism to Christianity, the comprehension of the concept of the divine nature of human beings, and further into the future, where, perhaps, there will be no place for the concept of “God”. From references to ancient and classical art to cutting-edge NFT video, the artist reveals the mechanisms of formation of new laws and represents the movement as a metaphor for progress, development, change, ambition, aspirations, growth; and at the same time as a symbol of running, inattention, transience, superficiality, variability, impermanence. What motivates us to go and progress? What is humanity looking for and striving for? Why does he establish certain rules and laws? Why are we moving and where are we going?

Daria Epin

Untitled (polytheism).

Eight street lights, reflective tape.

2022.

Text on the wall:

And Volodymyr began to reign alone in Kiev, and he placed idols on the hill outside the palace courtyard: Perun made of wood, with a silver head and a golden beak, and Horus, and Dazhbog, and Stribog and Smargl, and Mokosh. And they roasted them, shouting gods, and brought their sons, and burned with beasts, and profaned the land with their sacrifices.