New ABC-book
A series of 29 graphic works made with watercolor, watercolor pencils, ink, artist’s blood on paper.
"New ABC-book" by Tanya Pioniker — the platform of a huge railway station. Strange creatures huddle on it. Trains leave from it to different ends, to the "town" of Odoevsky, to the stage of the experimental theatre, to the contemporary art gallery. Prince Vladimir Fyodorovich himself would most likely be delighted with such a ABC-book-station. After all, he also traveled to the territory of different knowledge. He was engaged in predictions of the future, experimented with language and admitted all kinds of strange guests, hybrid creatures, language mutants, oxymorons and neologisms into his stories, parables, fairy tales, futuristic novels.
Our today's speech with hypes, lockdowns, distancing, toxic cisgenders is in many ways a hybrid mutant. A bit like the rasping creatures from the mechanistic, at the same time carnivorous transforming gardens of Hieronymus Bosch. Interestingly, Bosch, Odoevsky, and Tanya Pioniker are fantastic violators of all conventions. They challenge the well-fed tranquility of the world. They are not ashamed to be and be reputed to be ingenious eccentrics and originals. And the reconstruction of the Universe begins with speech, language, alphabet, ABC-book.
When you look at Tanya's jewelry delicate drawings with slender monkeys and hymenoptera mice, you experience untold pleasure from the speculative flipping of all kinds of magic books. In addition to Bosch, letters and initials from Gothic times come to mind with chimeras biting their spiral tails. The ABCs of Victorian England come to mind, as well as children's books like "Alice in Wonderland" with pictures of Tenniel. Beaded eccentric animals in plaid trousers and monocles nod from the faded pages. Of course, Tanya and the world of art send their greetings to the ABC-book. Here is the ABC in Pictures with the fabulous creatures of Alexandre Benois, and here is the ABC of the World of Art with caricatures of the eccentric aesthetes of the Silver Age by Mstislav Dobuzhinsky.
In the projection of history, we turn further through the "ABC" of Sasha Chorny, pictures to the books of the Oberiuts (Kharms, Vvedensky). Wonderful heroes of Tanya Pioniker are filigreely displayed in multi-colored frames and with their defenseless fragility are somewhat reminiscent of girlish drawings in school notebooks. Stencil drawings of letters along the ruler are also sent to them. Ilya Kabakov and Viktor Pivovarov come to mind here with their books for kids. Children's toys arrange a circus tent, and the frames turn into the backstage of the arena.
Such an interactive world of all sorts of glitches, nonsense and irregularities is precisely set in the romantic art of Pushkin's time by Prince Vladimir Odoevsky, one of the founders of the fantasy genre in literature. Like Odoevsky's, the hybrid worlds of Tanya Pioniker are disturbing our learned arrogance. They are forced to collect everything anew, turning off the banal daytime mode of understanding the obvious and releasing, as if in the night, the fantasies of the subconscious.
Sasha Chorny in "Live ABC" is exactly about this:
The letters are very tired
To sleep and sleep in thick books …
At midnight — a bunch of crazy
They climbed off the shelf onto the bed.
And from the bed — to the floor right away,
Looking at people asleep —
And they started leprosy,
Cheerful masquerade.
Our today's speech with hypes, lockdowns, distancing, toxic cisgenders is in many ways a hybrid mutant. A bit like the rasping creatures from the mechanistic, at the same time carnivorous transforming gardens of Hieronymus Bosch. Interestingly, Bosch, Odoevsky, and Tanya Pioniker are fantastic violators of all conventions. They challenge the well-fed tranquility of the world. They are not ashamed to be and be reputed to be ingenious eccentrics and originals. And the reconstruction of the Universe begins with speech, language, alphabet, ABC-book.
When you look at Tanya's jewelry delicate drawings with slender monkeys and hymenoptera mice, you experience untold pleasure from the speculative flipping of all kinds of magic books. In addition to Bosch, letters and initials from Gothic times come to mind with chimeras biting their spiral tails. The ABCs of Victorian England come to mind, as well as children's books like "Alice in Wonderland" with pictures of Tenniel. Beaded eccentric animals in plaid trousers and monocles nod from the faded pages. Of course, Tanya and the world of art send their greetings to the ABC-book. Here is the ABC in Pictures with the fabulous creatures of Alexandre Benois, and here is the ABC of the World of Art with caricatures of the eccentric aesthetes of the Silver Age by Mstislav Dobuzhinsky.
In the projection of history, we turn further through the "ABC" of Sasha Chorny, pictures to the books of the Oberiuts (Kharms, Vvedensky). Wonderful heroes of Tanya Pioniker are filigreely displayed in multi-colored frames and with their defenseless fragility are somewhat reminiscent of girlish drawings in school notebooks. Stencil drawings of letters along the ruler are also sent to them. Ilya Kabakov and Viktor Pivovarov come to mind here with their books for kids. Children's toys arrange a circus tent, and the frames turn into the backstage of the arena.
Such an interactive world of all sorts of glitches, nonsense and irregularities is precisely set in the romantic art of Pushkin's time by Prince Vladimir Odoevsky, one of the founders of the fantasy genre in literature. Like Odoevsky's, the hybrid worlds of Tanya Pioniker are disturbing our learned arrogance. They are forced to collect everything anew, turning off the banal daytime mode of understanding the obvious and releasing, as if in the night, the fantasies of the subconscious.
Sasha Chorny in "Live ABC" is exactly about this:
The letters are very tired
To sleep and sleep in thick books …
At midnight — a bunch of crazy
They climbed off the shelf onto the bed.
And from the bed — to the floor right away,
Looking at people asleep —
And they started leprosy,
Cheerful masquerade.
Exhibition view
Gogol center, 2021
Moscow, Russia
Moscow, Russia
