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With Love!
8.12.2023 - 28.01.2024

In honour of its nineteenth anniversary the Ruarts Gallery presents a celebratory exhibition by the Moscow artist GIWE. The gallery, founded in 2004 by collector Marianna Sardarova, has been representing Russian and foreign artists for many years, including participants in the ‘street wave’ movement. GIWE has been working as a graffiti artist since 2000, analysing modern man, the standardisation of life, copying and imitation, as reflected in his practice. Working primarily with rhinestones, the artist places them on canvases, tapestries, porcelain and Zhostovo trays, thereby poetising everyday existence and street life.

The exhibition ‘With Love!’ is a reflection on the image of the average person, documenting both desires and passions. The image of this ‘average person’ features in all the works as a ‘resident’ of the present who is inexorably attracted by accessible beauty. From scene to scene, GIWE’s hero meets the temptations of the modern world: he is surrounded by the trappings of a successful life. The artist enhances the emptiness of subjects in the stereotypical frames used by popular culture to depict a happy life with the spectacular redundancy of shining crystals. The theme and technique are deliberately grotesque. But this is not a mockery.

“I treat my Hero with love, because for me he is a find and a discovery, it’s like an ornithologist or biologist encountering a new species of bird or butterfly in the world ecosystem. But I don’t criticise or evaluate him, nor do I compare him with other species. I accept him as he is. I’m glad to have the opportunity to observe him and feel inspired by his vitality and energy. We know that species are often formed from the peculiarities of the environment in a particular region, and for me the project is already to some extent an ecosystem of the impressions in which my Hero was formed,” says GIWE.

Through the image of the ‘average person’ GIWE strives to capture the subjective present, the momentary, whatever that may be, and to comprehend the irony of admiring this ‘average’. Kitsch, cliché and the grotesque are taken to the limit by the artist – here is an opportunity to see the real you and the nature of your own desires behind a scattering of rhinestones and inexorable sparkle.

The exhibition will include GIWE’s ‘Megamix’, a 2018 short film shot by phone that indirectly tells us about the artist’s work and highlights the process of forming his Hero.

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Giwe was born in 1986 in Moscow. Since 2000 he has been working with graffiti. His study of modern human behavior is reflected in his decorative and applied practice. Member of a significant graffiti teams. He preferred mathematical education to an art education, which influenced the way of creating works. Giwe documents and analyzes human life in a large city, highlighting and reflecting common images. Results of his observations were first presented in the book "Film Flix" in 2016. This publication formed the basis for the film "Megamix" (2018). GIWE addresses to the topics of a life standardization, identity and copying. He is using rhinestones (fake diamonds) in works, GIWE explores the phenomenon of imitation in every sense, starting with imitation of goods and services, moving on to imitation of life principles and ideas. In the center of Moscow, you can find the artist's trademark logo – eyes with a sly squint, watching for what is happening around.

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Blueprint, 4.12.2023
Еще один праздник в этом дайджесте — столичной галерее Ruarts исполняется 19 лет.

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