TRIAD, February-March
1998

Ukhalova Victoria

February 17 – March 14

Victoria Ukhalova is a young artist from St.Petersburg. In 1987 she graduated from the St.Petersburg Art Academy Repin Institute, Architecture Department. Participated in numerous exhibitions in Russia, Europe, America. It was harmonious for Victoria, a modern artist having got classical education, to turn to the style of Petersburg neo-academicism, and it resulted in collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts and Timur Novikov. The artist works with photograph, video and new technologies, and she also makes use of paintings, graphic and plastic arts, including dancing art. The main themes of her works are interaction and accordance of two spaces: "divine architecture", manifested in the form of a human body, and "real architecture", as a sphere of man’s creative activities. All the exhibitions are somehow connected with the idea of synthetic elaboration of an artistic image.

The artist's video films "Rotatio" and "Rotatio-plus" were presented at the festivals in Slovenia and Spain, at the Neoacademic Art Festival in Moscow and at the Film Festival in St.Petersburg. The films "Rotatio", "Rotatio-plus", "Garuda" and "Fall" had been purchased by Zimmerly Museum and Modern Art Museum of the USA for their collections. In 1996, on Ukhalova’s initiative, a video art laboratory "Perigee" was founded, that afterwards was transformed into a public foundation "Video Art Movie" (affiliated to the St.Petersburg Institute of Cinema & Television). This foundation was aimed at the propaganda of alternative forms in video art. The foundation participated in arranging of a number of TV projects and festivals of modern art. One of the latest actions was "Video Art Movie-97" at the St.Petersburg House of Cinema.

Personal exhibitions:
1993 – "Manifestation" (painting; St. Petersburg Contemporary Art Center)
1995 – "Accordances" (photo, graphic art; St. Petersburg Museum of Russian Political History)
1996 – "Apollonian and Dionysian" (photo, video; St. Petersburg Museum of Fine Arts Academy)
1997 – "Garuda" (photo, video; St. Petersburg House of Cinema)

"My dreams are at the turn of the century. I would like to weave my art into the text of the third millennium, to participate in that global project", the artist says about her plans.

At the exhibition are presented about thirty photo works, installation "Running Man", including the demonstration of four video films – "Rotatio", "Rotatio-plus", "Garuda" and "Fall" (see the description below); at the vernissage you will see a performance "Dancing Man – Garuda Bird". During the exhibition a presentation of a St. Petersburg newspaper "Artistic Will" will take place, an issue dedicated to the centenary of the first edition.

The main idea of the exhibition "Triad" is to create a complete from the energetic viewpoint artistic image with the help of mixing of a sequence of those non-traditional technological spaces (video, computer, TV space) that absorb fragments of classical artistic conceptions. At the exhibition the artist tries to achieve a harmonious connection between man and technological space created by him and existing irrespective of him, and thus to find "ways of art". Photo and video computer spaces presented at the exhibition, are comparable in the confines of one artistic image, when technology acts as a necessity, as a time function. In contrast with the idea of Harmony, with the idea of The Possible, it can reproduce current reality of art created "here and just now" (i.e. technological space is able to reproduce the mystery of art’s birth, the moment of creation, which can be genuine only in real time). The image of Bird-Man is being composed within the limits of "terrestrial man" (the space of photography and video) and "celestial man" (the space of computer collage), getting its most complete embodyment in "Bird-Man" dancing in the light stream.

It should be noted that not only in their essence the works of Victoria Ukhalova are based on the comprehension of deep principles of the universe construction (let us mention the system of world’s structure in Chinese philosophy, or the principle of triad, which, according to Plato, is the base of universum structure), but the artist tries to make them perfect in the visual aspect as well.

The films being shown in the project:

"Rotatio" – filmed and edited in 1995. Screenplay by Andrey Pchelin, director of photography Alexander Lyabin. Musical arrangement is based on the mixture of two albums by the group "New Composers" – "Spectrum" and "Magnitola", edited together with V. Allakhov and S. Moskalenko. Starring: T. Novikov and A. Khlobystin, famous St. Petersburg artists.
The film depicts summer life in St.Petersburg. Documentary scenes of the action "Poetry Morning", picturesque views of the Islands and Petersburg architecture blend into one canvas, forming the image of a contemporary man, eclectic and contradictory person of the end of the century, performed by Eugene Sorokin. The hero tries to find lost integrity, consent with his own self, nature and cosmos.
26 minutes.

"Rotatio-plus" – video mixture based on the film "Rotatio" for channel 6, St. Petersburg TV. Music by "New Composers" group, theme from the album "Spectrum".
4.5 minutes.

"Garuda" – filmed in 1996 on a small granite island in Lake Ladoga. The camera follows the glance of a man waiting for something Different to meet with, non-everyday reality to reveal itself And his waiting has been rewarded – he becomes the witness of a momentary appearance of a mythical bird, travelling between the worlds. These memories haunt the hero again and again.
*Reference: Garuda Bird is an animal God Vishnu rode, embodying clearly marked male origin of this world. Garuda devours nagas (they personify sensual element of water), thus performing the function of world stabilization. Garuda’s image is placed on the State Emblem of Thailand, it naturally attracts Buddhist themes.

In this film are synthecized the elements of a modern dance (performed by E.Arutyunyan), photography and computer graphics. Music – remixture of the composition "Mineral Water" (project "Astro") by the group "New Composers".
5 minutes.

"Fall" – filmed in 1996, edited in 1997. Based on the combination of performed vignettes in the interiors of Baron Schtiglits Artistic Industrial College and computer animation.
A yearning angel comes down to earth, into the world of art, where he meets a poet (T. Novikov). He comes to know pretty surprising things about himself due to this meeting... An original sound–track has been composed by the group "New Composers".
5 minutes.

Acknowledgement: The author and the organizres of the exhibition are thankful to Alexey Bokarev for his assistance in elaborating of light design.

c r i t i q u e

Nezavisimaya Gazeta, March 12 1998
Victoria Ukhalova's Exhibition at TV Gallery

Victoria Ukhalova’s "Triad" was announced as an attempt to find "the way of art", which was to go through a point of intersection of "nontraditional technological spaces" (video, computer) and photography (apparently, as a traditional one). <...> The project is really good in setting of global questions, from quasi-religious to social ones. <...> The photo part of the project (almost thirty works) exists in a traditional neoacademic space filled with the fragments of classicistic stones, classical juvenile covered (and non-covered) flesh, and transparent and thoughtful glances, like in Vruebel’s paintings. In short, real embodiment of beauty or, as Timur Novikov commented, "the artist’s psychical feelings... appeal to beauty". <...>

The installation "Running Man" presented at the exhibition, includes the demonstration of video films of full value at the background of computer and video sketches. Evident symbolic contents of the films are emphasized by turning to religious mystical themes, and "imprinting" of symbols takes place with the help of editing, double exposition and computer effects.

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