Between the mulberry tree and kizyak. An exhibition by artist Vyacheslav-Yuriy Useinov has opened at "Ilkhom"

Between Mulberry and Kizyák. Artist Vyacheslav-Yuri Useinov's Exhibition Opens at Ilkhom

Vyacheslav-Yuri Useinov indeed has two names, and the second one did not appear by accident. He was born on April 12, 1962 — on Cosmonautics Day, which in Uzbekistan, as in the entire Soviet Union, was primarily associated with Yuri Gagarin. Thus, from early childhood and for the rest of his life, Yura found himself alongside Vyacheslav.

Throughout his entire professional career, the artist has also been engaged in a unique exploration of space — only not outer space, but artistic space.

At some point, Useinov felt that existing techniques were no longer enough, and instead of relying on a ready-made coordinate system, he began to search for his own way of constructing image and space.

The artist's speech at the opening could have been a brief lecture on contemporary art in its own right — with Marinetti, Bauhaus, Malevich, and Nathalie Sarraute as the main characters. Useinov suggests perceiving the exhibition not so much as a set of works, but as a spatial proof of his own artistic direction, which he formulated back in 2008 in the manifesto "On Fractal Verism."

At its core is an attempt to combine what usually seems incompatible: the precision of observation (from the Italian vero — true) — in small fragments, "fractals" — infinite geometric shapes, each fragment of which repeats when scaled down. Such painting requires patience: from afar it may look cohesive and calm, up close it breaks down into many details, and then comes together again into an image.

"Many artists look for certain themes, start to invent all this speculatively, but the importance of the world is its experienceability, and it should not be subject to time: neither the future nor the past. The art that I am presenting to you today is what I experienced as an imprinting state, that is, it is a state of 'here and now,'" Useinov said at the opening.

The title of the exhibition, which includes about 30 works — both widely known and new — is built on a play of meanings: "tut" in Russian means both an indication of place ("here") and one of the most common trees in Uzbekistan ("mulberry"). This is where one of the main logics of the project begins: a movement from a concrete, almost everyday object to a model of the structure of the world.

For Useinov, a fractal is not a mathematical illustration, but a principle of artistic thinking: form arises from repetition, self-similarity, multiplies, but at the same time retains an internal connection with the original element.

This is how, for example, the "chiy" reed-weaving technique popular in Central Asia works: each stick, wrapped in colored woolen thread, becomes an element capable of generating a whole. In this technique, there is Useinov's characteristic main attempt to derive the artistic form from the material itself, without imposing a pre-determined geometric scheme on it.

But the artist's most expressive statement arises where high theory clashes with deliberately low material. To the mulberry tree and the "silk paradise," Useinov contrasts kizyák (dried dung fuel), turning it into a kind of anti-art. Or craft paper, which the artist dampens and then twists, laying down each such stroke like a broad brushstroke.

"This duality looks deliberately provocative: on the one hand, natural beauty and decorativeness, on the other, what usually remains outside of aesthetic attention. In this gap, a certain tension arises that resists all marketing trends," the master explains.

Useinov does not just say that art should not be subject to the market — he literally drives the market mechanism to the point of absurdity. The artist organized a performance-auction in the lobby of the Ilkhom — putting several works from different periods up for bidding, and visitors actively began to fight for them. However, the auction turned out to be a trap — in the end, Useinov gave the works to the winners for free.

This gesture, at first glance anecdotal, in reality quite accurately continues the logic of the exhibition — the market was staged only to be canceled.

One can argue with the scale of this program, with the declaration of a new era, and even more so with the claim to revise the entire geometric history of art. But it is precisely this excessiveness, the attempt to break out of the linear time of art, where the present must inevitably refer to the past and promise the future, that makes the project interesting. Useinov invites viewers to linger in the present — in that very interval where a mulberry tree can turn out to be a model of the Universe, kizyák — a gesture of artistic resistance, and a single stick — the beginning of a fractal world. You only need to stop and walk in — the exhibition runs until October 13.

Admission is free.