Diary
Dimitri Semakov in ММОМА: The Structures of time
Series “Gates and Civilizations”. Untitled. Canvas, oil, mixed media. Size 180 cm x 110 cm. 2011. From MMOMA collection
Series “Gates and Civilizations”. Untitled. Canvas, oil, mixed media. Size 180 cm x 110 cm. 2011. From MMOMA collection
Series “Gates and Civilizations”. Untitled. Canvas, oil, mixed media. Size 180 cm x 110 cm. 2010. From MMOMA collection
Series “Gates”. Untitled. Canvas, oil, mixed media. Size 180 cm x 120 cm. 2012
Series “Gates”. Untitled. Canvas, oil, mixed media. Size 85 cm x 40 cm. 2010
Series “Gates and Civilizations”. Untitled. Canvas, oil, mixed media. Size 95 cm x 165 cm. 2001
Series “Gates”. Untitled. Paper, acril, oil, mixed media. Size 75 cm x 110 cm. 1998. From Evelina Khromtchenko private collection
Series “Gates”. Untitled. Canvas, oil, mixed media. Size 70 cm x 110 cm. 2012
Series “Gates and Civilizations”. Untitled. Canvas, oil, mixed media. Size 80 cm x 80 cm. 2012. From Evelina Khromtchenko private collection
Series “Gates”. Untitled. Canvas, oil, mixed media. Size 150 cm x 60 cm. 2011
Series “Gates and Civilizations”. Untitled. Canvas, oil, mixed media. Size 110 cm x 45 cm. 2012
Series “Gates and Civilizations”. Untitled. Canvas, oil, mixed media. Size 165 cm x 85 cm. 2007
Series “Gates”. Untitled. Canvas, oil, mixed media. Size 140 cm x 85 cm. 2011 From Evelina Khromtchenko private collection
The Structures of Time is a large-scale retrospective of works by Dimitri Semakov. For the first time, Semakov’s major painting series, sculptures, installations and videos are introduced in this exhibit. Created in the last thirty years in Moscow, New York City, Brussels and Cologne, Semakov’s pieces are finally presented under one roof, the Yermolaevsky Pereulok museum venue 11.11 – 6.12 – 2015.
The artwork forms a comprehensive symbolic environment, revealing and emphasizing key moments of the author’s personal geography.
The pre-revolutionary Palladian-style mansion, designed and built for the Moscow Architectural Society, is quite relevant to Semakov’s artistic interests. Its architecture sets the direction of the artist’s reflections on existing within time, on how the pulse of past civilizations, which have become mere chapters in history of humanity, is distantly felt here and now. Semakov’s art offers the artist’s thoughts on things that melt away without trace and things that remain, despite political upheavals, scientific discoveries and philosophical shifts.
Migrating from painting to painting, the recurring motifs of the Ancient Greek, Medieval and Renaissance European architecture bring harmony and order to Semakov’s expressive work, referring back to the ecstatic Baroque Nocturnes by El Greco or Magnasco, twilight scientific fantasies by Piranesi, and inspired colorful symphonies by Kandinsky. These themes introduce the stable cultural codes, which are kept by the the ancient Greek philosophers’ concept of Arche, into the shimmering surface of his works, deliberately intensified by the combinations of primary color and filled with dissolving silhouettes of people.
There are portals, multilevel galleries, Vitruvian bases, capitals, Gothic supports, vaults… The artist tallies the elements of the abstracted vocabulary of plastic and spatial impressions in his works like flashes of memory. The architectural forms are not just elements of a large stylistic construction set, but tangible traces of time — the only significant carriers of civilization meanings.
The exhibition occupies all floors of the museum mansion. It gives the viewer an opportunity to make a journey though time and space. Each of the four large stops of this real and simultaneously metaphysical ascent focuses on the frontier symbolic structures — gates, towers, arches and windows, revealing the dialectical pairing of the matter and the eidos, the present and the past, painting and architecture.
Text: Andrei Egorov, Anna Arutyunyan
