A specialist of Magnezit Group participated in the “No Dark” Illumination Arts Festival held in Yekaterinburg with the project devoted to ecology and animals from the Red Book of the Chelyabinsk region.

The festival is held in Yekaterinburg on the annual basis in the dates around the longest night in the year. This time it was a jubilee – the tenth – festival; it was held on December 24-25, but some light installations will remain in the streets of the city until the end of the January holidays. The festival sites were the center of the city and Mayakovskiy Park, where the artists from Ural and Moscow exhibited more than 30 creative works. An art object made by Yevgeny Andreyev, the director of the Representative Office of Magnezit Group in Chelyabinsk, is among them. He named his project “Endangered Species”: using the neon tape, he depicted the animals from the Red Book of the Chelyabinsk region: an otter, a European mink, a stiff-tailed duck, an Otis tarda, a whimbrel, a net-winged beetle, and a Freija fritillary.

The object was named so not only due to the rare and vanishing species, but also due to the light effect: when the light is switched off, the figures “disappear” one by one.

– With the contemporary art I wanted to focus the spectators on the ecology issues, and it seems to me I managed to do so. The project invokes thinking about the endangered species and learning the reasons for their disappearance. It is pleasant to note that there was one more art object at the festival, which related to protection of the environment – “The Map” made by Yulia Demchenko. In the creative form she showed the significance of the green belt of parks and woods around Yekaterinburg, says Yevgeny Andreyev.

His project was implemented with the assistance of Magnezit Group and STL-Expo Company. He also “tested the pen” before implementing the idea: Yevgeny tried making illuminated objects at his summer residence place.

- I consulted my friends-artists with respect to both the concept and its implementation; I made my first objects after selecting some of the endangered species from the Red Book of the Chelyabinsk region. I started creating contours of rare birds, butterflies, and wild animals. I showed them to my friends and they liked them. Later I was invited to the art festival in Yuzhnouralsk, but it was called off, and I was invited by the organizers of “No Dark”. As a result, my brother, friends, children and I assisted by the project partners made ten illuminating figures, which “lived” during the festival practically in their natural surroundings – in the remote and silent area of Mayakovskiy Park, says the author of the project. The author plans to show his art objects in Satka and to invite the organizers and some festival participants to artistic meetings in Art-Satka, establish a school of illumination art for children and to hold the “No Dark” festival in our city.

OUR INFO:

Festival - 2022 was devoted to the 300th anniversary of Yekaterinburg. It was organized by the “Cultural Transit” park with the support of the Department of Culture of the Administration of Yekaterinburg and the event partners: the Yekaterinburg Academy of Contemporary Arts, “Avant-Garde Territory” project, lyceum named after Dyagilev, etc.

Source: Magnezitovets. Photo by Anton Butsenko, Aleksey Patentniy.