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  • THE FIRST ART PIECE IN THE GALLERY

The future “Pocket Park Gallery” on Lenin Street, Satka, now has got its first art piece. This is a new work by Alexei Luka, a Moscow-based artist. The other day, he decorated a garage near Art-Satka and the workshops of the A. K. Savin Mining and Ceramic College in his style that Satka residents know well.

The bright-colored “cozy painting” has become the first decorative element in the “Pocket Park Gallery”. As you may know, the “Pocket Park Gallery” it is being created on Lenin Street under the landscaping project that won Satka the Russian national competition of comfortable environment projects. The reconstruction work has been underway since last year. The plan is to create a wide pedestrian avenue with pocket parks: eight recreation zones, all different in style and functionality.

With its new look, the garage, apart from becoming a new art-object in the town, also constitutes a kind of a collection of “snapshots” – elements that remind you of Luka’s earlier works created in Satka, including the industrial site of Magnezit Group. 

“This part of the wall is like nostalgia for “the Hangar,” I say to Luka as I stand with him before the painting, “looking” down the street, and remember his mural of 2018.

“We’re using some paints I used for “the Hangar”. Some colors are the same, and they remind you of it,” says Alexei. “By the way, I added some elements from earlier works: there is something from “the Hangar” here, and there is the little red house on that side, as a symbol of warmth, comfort and happiness. There is a similar element in the wall painting at the stadium of School No. 14, with a roller ski track and a skate area.” 

Now, the garage itself, which used to hide behind the fence (now removed) has come to look cozy and homey. It’s like it shed its boring gray concrete attire and draped itself in a nice, soft plaid blanket. And now, this object is “literally” saying: “Live faster!”. One starts looking forward to seeing what things around it are going to look like, how it will fit into the new pocket park and what its seven “neighbors” will be like.

The work was created with the assistance of the Sobranie Fund, Magnezit Group and the Satka District Administration.

FOR INFORMATION:

Alexei Luka is a Moscow-based artist, a representative of street wave art in Russia, whose artistic technique focuses on abstract painting as well as on reinterpreting the modernist traditions of neo-plasticism in urban space. Alexei works with architectural form and texture of materials and creates artwork using the collage and the assemblage techniques as well as various media: painting, artistic graphics, objects, installations and site-specific projects. His works are an organic fit for an urban space. They also give the viewer a new interpretation, like a jigsaw puzzle game where you need to “decode” the pieces and put them together. Luka is a regular participant at Russian and international biennials and art festivals and the creator of vast murals in Russia, Italy, Spain, Germany, Denmark, France, etc.

The Pocket Park Gallery project involves transforming Lenin Street into a pedestrian street that would operate as a corridor, with eight pocket parks being the “rooms”. The plan includes a gallery museum of public spaces: the existing elements with some additions will be made to fit into the general outline, the new elements being the Students Pocket Park, the Pocket Park on the Hill, the Landscape Garden, and the pedestrian parkway. The funding envisaged for the project amounts to 152 million rubles, of which 90 million come from the grant provided under the national contest, 31 million rubles are co-financing undertaken by the regional and the municipal governments, and another 31 million rubles come from off-budget sources.

Source: Magnezitovets. Photo by: Vasily Maksimov.