Alexandra Paperno: Popular
Astronomy
Which is the
reality that confronts the viewer of Alexandra Paperno’s "Popular Astronomy”?
Is it the reality of painted canvases, hung on the walls of an exclusive
gallery space? Or, perhaps, the reality of the everyday: the familiar,
unidimensional reality, based on the scientific worldview, woven from images
and conventional symbols?
In the
second half of the twentieth century, the role of scientific knowledge in
society began to change. Penetrating the realm of the everyday, science was
forging a new understanding of the world. With the rise of popular science
publications, it had also begun to enjoy a near-total legitimacy. "Popular
Astronomy”, "Popular Mechanics”, "Popular Philosophy”, "Popular Art” all become
identifying signs of a modern, disenchanted world. Meanwhile, the mind of
modern man became etched with their textbook images and accompanying materials.
What these images actually related to was of secondary importance: by now,
these signs have almost entirely lost any connection they had with the
signified.
When brought
to the canvas by the painter’s brush, however, conventional images devoid of
meaning take on an entirely new tonality. Concentrated focus, unwavering gaze
and artistic expression all combine to instill new life into dead signs. The
painted picture you see comes to ask the question: what do you see? Do you understand
what you see?
In Alexandra
Paperno’s project, "popular” is not allied with ideas of accessibility or
intelligibility, with the conventionality of values and meanings. Instead,
"popular” is understood as a particular form of social practice, an instigating
thought. It is an attempt to overcome the closed parochialism of the artistic
and scientific systems; an attempt to return to the subjective entirety of
practical experience. In a very strange way indeed, "Popular Astronomy”
provides visual images that draw a viewer away from any benign equilibria of
visual stereotypes. In other words, it is an exhibition that allows the viewer
to be astonished once again.
Polina Zhurakovskaya
Popular
Astronomy
In her
project «Popular Astronomy» Alexandra Paperno expresses the inexpressible. She
points out the fact that simple is awfully complicated. What is most
important here is that the traditional position of the artist
as a genius lecturing the viewer is altered. Here the viewer,
who for the past twenty years or so has been required
to be an active participant while at the same time has been
intimidated and to certain extend victimized, is finally
rehabilitated. The viewer is now absolutely equal to the artist
in his ability to feel free and joyful. In any case, Alexandra
Paperno puts a lot of effort into achieving this. Her position
is profoundly ethical and positively moral and, most importantly, her art
is seductive and symbolic as indeed art is supposed to be.
The title of the
exhibition is taken from a well-known, once popular but now
absolutely antiquarian French book* that is filled with tables, pictures,
engravings, technical drawings and all possible theories and stories about the
night sky. The idea that a lofty and complex science about the stars can
have a popular format without loosing its quality is fundamental
here. It meets another, American idea of popularity as general
accessiblity (we certainly mean Pop Art which, in its own time,
remained being an art for the elites). Today, on crossroads of popular
science and contemporary art, the project of Alexandra Paperno defines
popular (populus, social) as a place of finding of new
meanings. Her paintings became simpler, which gives a feeling
of an improbable openness.
It is also
a story about light. The light of heavenly bodies or the light
derived from the encounter of the cultural experience of the viewer
with the deeply personal experience of the artist.
It is as if a person growing up suddenly realizes that
his first love and his first success, hid dreams and bitter disappointments are
not at all unique and that it is wonderful.
Elizaveta Plavinskaya
* Book by a French astronomer Camille Flammarion «Astronomie
Populaire» (Popular Astronomy), published in 1879.
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