Man as Bird

Man as Bird. Images of Journeys

Throughout history we have expanded the boundaries of the visible and found new perspectives. The development of optics and the evolution of art went hand in hand, and the artists were armed first with camera obscura, then with video camera. The expansion of the optic outlook has always aimed at knowledge of the world. From expeditions to remote parts of the world, to change of the very way we see things, this process unfolded in history, corresponds to an inner transformation one accomplishes in life.

To link classic tradition with contemporaneity, ultimately contributing to reshaping the optics of the viewer's perception is one of the goals of The Pushkin Museum XXI project reflected in this exhibition. This direction of the museum is designed to connect the classic and the new, to relate the Russian and the international art process, to promote a dialogue of the forms of representation of contemporary art, and to present artists who speak the language of the new media.

The exhibition Man as Bird. Images of Journeys invites the viewer to travel across multiple dimensions – space, time and individual experience – which may alter perception of the world and of the self. The initial morphology and structure of the images transforms along the journey due to different viewpoints incorporated in the project. Like Jonathan Swift's Gulliver or Lewis Carroll's Alice, the viewer will experience unusual proportions and perspectives: the world transforms, the point of view changes, the real and the imaginary intertwine and no longer correspond to our former beliefs.

The art journey turns out to be not just a mere geography – here the structure of space reflects the worldview. Travelers from different eras have interpreted this structure in various ways; it could become patchy and spotty because by describing just the stops they would miss the distances.

Along the journey, the angle of vision expands – from the familiar 120 degrees of the human vision to 360 degrees of the bird's eye. The space built in accordance with the laws of linear perspective, familiar to the viewer since the Renaissance, seems right only at the first glance. The viewer placed in the center of a panorama often loses his ability to see details. They merge within an overall undifferentiated flow.

Persistent distortion of reality, sudden transitions from close up to distant perspective result in the viewer's loss of ability to hold a certain position; at some point being critically remote from details leads to partial blindness. Disturbances of the space and the vortex of time pull the viewer into the black hole, leading him to a synthetic multilayered experience of expanded vision, like a lonely traveler attempting to find his own self. Sound, tactile sensation, and haptic vision allow experiencing one more space - the space of memory, which foregrounds the individual journey through the self. Ultimately, perceptions and feelings shape our attitude towards the space outside and memory inside, and color our impressions in unexpected tones. The vanishing point converging bird's-eye view and human perspective, the machine and the human eye, spaces of history and individual memory is inside each of us, and the ultimate goal of this odyssey is to know oneself.

Curators
Marina Loshak, Olga Shishko

Project Producer
Elena Rumyantseva

Architect
Inna Kalenskaya

Special Events Producers
Marina Vasiltsova, Yana Tibben

International Project Coordinator
Alina Stulikova

Project Coordinators
Julia Grachikova, Anna Naumova, Varvara Melekestseva

Technical Director of the Project
Anton Safiulin

In its new projects, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts is aimed to involve classical art into a dialogue with contemporaneity and suggests a new perspective for perception of widely known works. The Museum creates a new area of focus – Pushkin Museum XXI.

Pushkin Museum XXI is a program aimed to demonstrate to the visitors what contemporary art is about and to give an idea of its most prominent representatives, to show the art of modern classics who speak not only a language of pictorial art, graphic and photography, but also a language of a new forms. Video, sound, performance could fit harmoniously into the context of a traditional museum. A new media frequently transitory and ephemeral can impart a new understanding of a classical artworks making them breathe and move, involving them into a dialog with a viewer.

Pushkin Museum XXI is an innovative division of the Museum, where all forms of the contemporary art presentation from painting and sculpture to video art and virtual reality are fully involved into a dialogue.

Pushkin Museum XXI is a "Museum in the Museum". The basis of this current direction is an integration of education, research and exhibition activities, which help to develop the evolution of an artistic image from classic methods to modern technologies.

The collection of Pushkin Museum XXI will be based on the works of Russian and foreign artists participating in the exhibition projects as well as works created specifically for the Museum.

Pushkin Museum XXI projects will be also held at various venues of the future Museum District - renovated and new buildings of the District will be used for temporary exhibitions. In the future, Pushkin Museum XXI will become a separate entity and get its own building.

Press Kit (PDF)

Exhibition Booklet (PDF)