Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art presents an exhibition by Katerina Smirnova and Stanislav Danilin – the last romantics of the 20th and new modernists of the 21st centuries.

  • An artist duo confidently drawing on the avant-garde agenda of the past.

  • A fantasy version of human feelings and sound perception.

  • Striking artistic visions snatched from the current information realm.

Katerina Smirnova and Stanislav Danilin’s artist duo, also known as The spot, confidently works in media endorsed by century-old art trailblazers. Indeed, both collage and electroacoustic music emerged as art forms back in the days of visionary groundbreakers proclaiming all kinds of new-isms (by the way, before Cubism, collage was mainly a scrapbooking practice, relegated to ladies’ friendship albums). In drawing on the avant-garde agenda of the past, Smirnova and Danilin act as the last romantics of the 20th and new modernists of the 21st centuries.

Like Surrealists and Dadaists before her, Katerina Smirnova tries to sort herself out by extracting her dreams and fantasies from the glossy bulk of quotidian reality. Using the ‘copy and paste’ method, she assembles her artistic visions from the bits and pieces of the current information realm. The lush fruit and body parts, initially addressed to our subconscious and aimed at triggering consumerist desires, are snatched from the advertising centrefolds, regrouped by the artist, and returned to the addressee. In these chaotic pictures, everything falls into place and essentially chimes with human nature: after all, sensual desire seems far more natural than a desire to own a bag or a watch.

Interestingly enough, in his musical experiments Stanisalv Danilin, by contrast, eschews the collage technique well-loved by electronic musicians in favour of interacting with sound waves and looking for answers to the question ‘What sound could feelings make?’ At the same time, against the droning background of modular synthesisers Stanislav performs something akin to modern-day chansonettes with lyrics, in turn, featuring very collage-like imagery.

One might argue that The spot duo is something of an electric cabaret whose participants rather boldly expose themselves to the public, encouraging the viewer to share in their sensual experience of beauty. The artists seem to expect the same openness in response, as the central exhibit is an interactive one, requiring viewers’ feedback. It is an artistic model of the brain, a fantasy version of human feelings and sound perception. One might say that in our days even school kids know good and well that there is no such thing as love–only hormones and electric impulses, and even the frisson induced by deeply moving music has been thoroughly explained in popular science articles . . . Nevertheless, as long as there are still romantics willing to write love songs and speak to the subconscious, one can temporarily cast off the sorrows of knowledge and enjoy the illusory world of art.