“A Get-Together” – an exhibition with this cozy name has opened in the small auditorium of the Magnezit Cultural Center. It is an exhibition of the SatKKKa Creative Cluster organized by the Art-Satka public creative space with the support from the Satka District Development Assistance Fund.

The new display is a combination of forms and meanings that reflect how the participants of the project understand one amazing thing, which is... a chair.

At the Get-Together exhibition, a chair is not just an object of art; it is also an allegory – a reference to the warm, cozy and secure feeling of being at home. When the winter and the cold arrive, people more often feel like staying at home, where it is warm, cozy and good, where they are surrounded by their loved ones and where it is so good to spend time with them, having tea, warm conversations, cooking their favorite dishes...

A welcome guest is invited to take the place of honor. A tired traveler is always be invited to sit down and rest. To sit down before a journey means to summon good luck for the trip. “Bring the chairs!” we cry joyfully as we have a large family gather in a circle. The choice of a chair for creative interpretation at the 265th anniversary of Satka, a common home for tens of thousands of people, was not accidental.

The exhibition offers a warm home circle for both artists and visitors. Just like other exhibitions, this event is an act of popular art, where any Satkan could take part in the performance. Lyubov Serova, a professional painter, took part the exhibition for the first time.

As the exhibition was prepared, old chairs were given a new life, through new meaning. During meet-the-artist events and master-classes, the participants were sharing their thoughts, life stories and dreams associated with home. The warm atmosphere of those meetings was reflected in the name of our exhibition. A Get-Together is not just about what we are going to see at the exhibition. It also a way of creative communication, which gave birth to it.

The seats and backs of the chairs became canvases for painters and needle artists. Life stories and imagination, forms and textures, the past and the future – all merge and melt into new things in these exhibits of popular art, bringing together traditions and modernity in eternity. After all, sat is translated as eternity. A chair is a background component of an indoor space as well as the main character with its own personality. It all depends on the angle! It is the first time that the series of exhibitions created a mixed genre: dance teams of Satka joined the applied art demonstration, so now the exhibition also involves colorful performances.

In art, a chair is a multi-layered and polysemantic object. This image has been explored and interpreted by painters, sculptors and designers for centuries. The authors of A Get-Together just touched on this subject and will continue exploring it in the future. The first guests at the exhibition on its opening day – December 19 – were gifted kids who received awards for their achievements at the Magnezit Cultural Center, and their parents. Visitors called the exhibition impressive: who could have thought that there could be so many different interpretations and presentations of just one piece of furniture! It can even be...danced, like it was in a short film created as part of the project.

The exhibition will be open in the small auditorium of the Cultural Center until February 18, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Admission is free.

Based on the content from the VK group of the Assistance Fund. 

Photo by Denis Shakirov and Andrey Lemesh.