A new exhibition at the Magnezit Cultural Center presents the project “Imaginary Museum of Mikhail Shemyakin. Hand in Art.” The exhibition is free to visit and will be open through February 9, 2025.

The display presents material of a multiple-year research of Mikhail Shemyakin, and works by modern artists, including residents of Satka District, selected in a contest held under the project. The exhibition gathered a huge number of art works – from miniature drawings to a large outdoor installation The Print shaped as a labyrinth (it was built especially for the event and will remain in Satka). The dialog with the audience is conducted not just through the exhibits on display but also through digital formats (visitors may watch a film about Mikhail Shemyakin, use VR-technology to visit his studio, and study the electronic archive of the project). There are also educational events held for children and for everybody else: lectures, master classes and quizzes. The final curtain of the exhibition is going to the scientific conference “Hand in Art”.

- “Welcome, everyone who has come to see this exhibition called “Hand”, which, I think, is going to be interesting for everyone. When you get to know the subject matter, you’ll realize how diverse the depictions of the hand have been in art – in painting, sculpture, graphics, and how many different meanings this theme really has,” said Mikhail Shemyakin to the audience via remote video-conference channel during the opening of the exhibition on November 27. - “When I was a student, my professor kept telling me: “Pay attention to the hands in the paintings. If the hands are done well, the person really knows how to draw, they are a master.” It’s true that it’s hard to draw a moving or a static hand so that it would tell you something or carry a certain meaning.

He mentioned the magnetism of hand movements in ballet as an example. Olga Sazonova, Director General of the Mikhail Shemyakin Center, Art History PhD and the supervisor to the project “Imaginary Museum of Mikhail Shemyakin”, continued the theme. She gave the first tour for visitors to the display and drew their attention to the “black sheets” showing together hundreds of all kinds of hands in all kinds of images and with all kinds of meanings. Mikhail Shemyakin creates every sheet himself, over the course of a long reflection on the composition and its meaning. Here are the hands in the first sheets included in the project (these sheets started the research back in 1963, which still continues today and has combined over 700 themes already). Here are hand prints, and this is a portrait of a hand, a meta-hand, a perforated hand, multiple hands, and many other sub-themes.

An especially prominent part of the exhibition is the one presenting original works from Mikhail Shemyakin’s personal collection: graphic art by Aleksandr Alekseyev; a series of photographs “City by Touch” by Andrey Chezhin, an artist from Saint Petersburg, who via the prism of an outstretched hand invites the visitor to get to know the city through tactile contact; photographs by Mikhail Shemyakin, which combine the hand theme and the shadow theme, as well as his abstract style snapshots from Afghanistan where he was on a peace-making visit in 1991, with the resulting series of reflections of a hand in a kettle; a conceptual series with had images, created by the artist and his pupil, Vladimir Zimakov.

Works by modern artists, selected via a contest held under the project, add to the exhibition. Their works, which were selected and then approved by Mikhail Shemyakin, are also displayed in the Magnezit Cultural Center. They include photographs by Vera Panova, a drawing by Anatoly Khmelevsky, digital art by Darya Lisina, sculptures by Natalya Khokhryakova and Elena Subbotina, as well as the works by artists of Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Sevastopol, Volgograd, Perm, Yekaterinburg, Miass, etc.

– “The entire display is an unusual expression of the artist’s idea and thought,” says Tamara Tuyeva, a Magnezit CS veteran, who came to the exhibition with her sister Alla. – “One would say that a hand is just a hand, but here, at the exhibition, we can see it differently for the first time. As for me, I loved the drawing with a hand where every line is a text. I was drawn to this work, and to that sculpture, which is hard to interpret at once. It’s not quite clear what it is, whether it’s one or two hands, as there is a lot of fingers and each one has a meaning of its own. Seeing such things for the first time is fun. I’ll come back here for sure, with my grandson, in order to see, to read and to think, as such artwork does make you think.

There is an audio guide available for a detailed tour. The exhibition is open on weekdays from 10:00 to 19:00. Admission is free. Events related to the project can be followed through Art-Satka’s “playbills”.

All information on the project, wherein Magnezit is a partner, is available on the official website of the Mikhail Shemyakin Center: mihfond.ru

Source: Magnezitovets Photo by: Vasily Maksimov.