'ISEETHESUN' by Evgeny Dedov & Natalia Gurova at bAU2-6, Vienna

These bodies of work started to evolve in 2020 and vastly expanded in 2021 when Natalia and Evgeny were in dialogue with each other, sometimes visiting studious of each other, sometimes just chatting. Both of them are coming from Russia and currently living in Vienna but came from very different poles. 

This exhibition was initiated by the Academy of Fine Arts drawing class in Vienna, which organised an external exhibition space for the students and artists coming from different disciplines. So, it happens to Evgeny, who is mainly dealing now with the temporality of painting and Natalia, who were experimenting with materiality through and with the sculpture. 

The grouping of works that form this show has come through vastly improvised decisions; for example, old doors used as a wall or rusty hook outside of the space became a perfect functional detail holding a metal sign that became an exhibition title. Sometimes if the place is not just a white cube is determining the positioning of the works. By combining pieces, artists tried to re-organise the space and the meanings of some aspects in it. Sometimes leftovers of one work became a new beginning of another, or one myth was a continuous ending for the future fairytales. 

Evgeny, while working on his detailed and précised paintings, was researching a biography of one Russian classical painter Pavel Fedotov. He lived in the XIX century and started from a very academician way of painting. As his madness progressed, the painting style changed. All these put on a question of perception, what can we catch, and how to read if there are no references. Or there are some but slightly hidden…
As with many of Natalia’s works, sculptures consist of different components and contexts, somehow illusive, altered, unfixed yet and might change their given narrative by repositioning. The questions Natalia deals with mainly circle a historical record, linearity and non-linearity of time, liquid materiality and its influence on the finished object. 

After this show, space won’t exist anymore. The artists didn’t know about it before. The owner decided to renovate it shortly after the last exhibition.

— Natalia Gurova