Works of HSE Art and Design School Students to Be Auctioned for First Time

© Mitya Lyalin

On December 4, the HSE ART GALLERY opens a pre-auction exhibition of works by students of the HSE Art and Design School. Within two weeks, the exposition will be available to all lovers of contemporary art, after which it will go to GUM, where the pieces will be put up for auction at the joint New Year’s SAMPLE and the HSE ART GALLERY auction.

The exhibition includes more than 30 works in a wide range of media, including painting, photography, sculpture, embroidery, and posters. Students of the HSE Art and Design School’s programmes in ‘Design’, ‘Contemporary Art’, and ‘Fashion’ will put up their works for auction for the first time – a process that will be a new educational experience for them.

Works for the auction were selected in an open call format. Any student of the HSE Art and Design School could apply to have their work included in the auction. The most promising pieces were then selected by a commission consisting of HSE ART Gallery Director Julia Yusma, SAMPLE Co-Founders Alexandra Lekomtseva and Anna Naumova, and Cosmoscow Contemporary Art Market Founder Margarita Pushkina.

Leonid Bazhanov, Academic Supervisor of the Bachelor’s Programme ‘Contemporary Art’, HSE Art and Design School

In addition to acquiring artistic skills, studying the theory and history of art, and mastering technological tools, student of our programme engage in other forms of professional development. This includes implementing curatorial projects, participating in exhibitions, and developing art market strategies. Participating in the auction is extremely beneficial. Future artists must be prepared to work in the real world, and they need practical experience with entering the art scene, which is full of temptations, illusions, triumphs, and defeats. Support from reliable partners will help our aspiring artists find the right benchmarks in achieving their creative ambitions even at the training stage.

Alina Zolotykh, a 4^th-year student of the ‘Contemporary Art’ Programme, has a project in the exhibit entitled ‘Warning! Playground Not Suitable for Use!’ The project consists of a series of embroidered pieces which each depict a unique still of the past. Alina explains that the pieces are all based on her own memories and childhood videos shot by her father: ‘My project is about the digitalization of memory. I was interested in finding common ground between real and digital memories and understanding how they coexist. I came to the conclusion that there are three main kinds of memories: memories that are wholly personal; those that are completely digital, but which we perceive as real; and those that are mixed. In recent years, the share of memories that are “personal” has been dissolving, and remembering is becoming increasingly difficult. But at the same time, the emotional component acts as an anchor, allowing you to return to that moment of the past and feel it again.’

4^th-year student Mitya Lyalin’s project involved a fashion shoot, since he is interested in camouflage in both fashion and in nature.

‘The purpose of the shoot was to study the interaction of humans and space. Stylists Marina Aleksashina, Zlata Sapko, and I created an oversaturated space and picked out clothing that would facilitate a merging of the model with the surrounding space,’ says Mitya. In addition to the two stylists, Mitya was helped by set designer Dasha Belousova and model Nastya Grigoriadi: for five hours, the three of them hung up fabrics and prepared for the shoot. The whole creative process took almost 12 hours.

Polina Dmitrieva’s project allowed her to answer a question that has long been tormenting her: ‘What place does subject memory have in art?’ According to the third-year student, each object of our surroundings us holds a piece of our common cultural past.

‘My project, “The Condition of Things”, is a set of nine plates. In fact, I worked with ready-made objects: Soviet ZiK dishes (many know them as those “plates with a blue border”). This is an installation where my series is displayed on a large table: the dishes of the apartment owner are imprinted with photographic images of his belongings. The ZiK porcelain dishware, which almost all Soviet people had, as well as the modern belongings, form a collection of artefacts, each of which represents an endless source of information,’ says Polina, who worked on the project for about three weeks.

For Polina, the auction is an opportunity to participate in the real art market, as well as interact with artists, collectors, curators, and critics – the audience with whom she will work in the future.

‘For our gallery, this is a new format,’ says HSE ART GALLERY Director Julia Yusma. ‘In fact, it is our first collaboration with a friendly cultural project that has a clearly defined mission, clear aesthetic criteria for selecting works, and its own audience. Outsiders’ views and feedback are important to us. We are interested in creating a living environment inside the School, where the entire learning process is accompanied by responses from the professional community.’

SAMPLE is a multidisciplinary project whose main task is to familiarize a wide audience with the works of young and promising artists from around the world. SAMPLE Online Gallery presents over 400 works by 38 artists. Over the course of its existence, the project has held seven auctions, three exhibitions, participated in Moscow’s Museum Night 2018, and sold more than 700 works.

HSE ART GALLERY Director Julia Yusma also noted that the gallery will help students with the implementation of their ideas - many of them will see their work for the first time fully realized and on display. For example, photographs that previously existed only in digital form will be printed and framed. Moreover, each work will receive not only an aesthetic appraisal, but a commercial one as well.