Erik Meistrup 3 August 2000

The Tale of Modern Life is Everywhere

Pavel Makov and David Rees Davies, 29/7 - 15/8 at Allestedgård, Allestedgårdsvej 10, Vejle-Allested.

Two artists from Ukraine (Makov) and England (Davies) respectively have in collaboration with their Danish hosts Holm and Rytter establised an analog exhibition in the rustic idyl of a Funish village. The exhibition is a brief, visible materialization of the project The Museum of Modern Life which is both a fundamental, artistic concept for Markov and the beginning of an Internet Museum with visual recording of the new life which the technological revolution has created from the mid 1980s and onwards. The exhibition is both an extremely personal meeting between the two artists who celebrate the tenth anniversary of their acquaintance and therefore spend their time collaborating on a common work of art to be used in a future exhibition. Davies´part of the exhibition is a relatively limited section of his production from the 90s, but one can sense his standpoint and artistic power. "Wanderer" his pen and ink drawing in brown nuances from 1994, shows his position in the late figurative, European Expressionism which also counts such powerful Danes as Arne Haugen Sørensen and late Sven Wiig Hansen or as a Palle Nielsen. Davies concentrates his vision and often selects a few characteristic traits about the theme he is reworking so that the individual pictures almost stand as icons on the surface. The picture "Memorial" from 1992 makes one think of exactly Palle Nielsen with its attempt to depict the concept of city compared to an empty surface which is meant to become the nature which the city will dominate and recreate in its future image. The big and expansive exhibition of Makov´s works from the 1990s until now fills the old stables and barn so that pictures and building seem to become one. Pavel Makov explains that this particular farm has been chosen because it will live on as new leaves in the ongoing tale of modern life which he is working on. These impressions will be a component in a future exhibition in Kiev, Ukraine. It is both an interesting and impressive exhibition which incessantly forces you to stop and press your nose against each individual picture trying to get it all in. Makov´s pictorial universe is a myriad of details which in a strange way seem to merge into one picture and then again dissolve itself into lines and details making your eyes and consciousness look for new contexts and stories. One realizes that to Makov everything is development and change, which means that during the work process he also constantly adds and deletes on the works he is already in the process of creating. One experiences this at its strongest in "Places" I-VIII where one follows the development of a town (his own) through a long indefinite historical time. It is the same simple plate which has been used all through the process so that the artist just like the town itself has committed himself to continued development. The individual works seem to smell of old age, but this is a misreading. Makov may use old pieces of paper together with completely new ones in his works, but it is through the ongoing work process that all works are changed and become "old". To underline that he is not looking for the aesthetic - that is "antiquity", he has in a lot of his works carried out the framing with clear laminated plastic. Thereby he emphasizes that it is the conceptual documentation in the present he is aiming for. In all his works this dialogue between the materials and the expression has been built in. Aestheticism is not a goal but one of the means available to the artist in his attempt to understand life itself. Another means are the many faces, always in profile, who appear everywhere as stamps and sometimes seem to fill the whole picture with a myriad of faces. The faces are a part of life and part of the expression of the towns. Therefore new faces appear all the time, faces which are also incorporated into already existing (completed) works. The transformation of the faces into stamps is a way of continually maintaining the local as well as the global and thereby as a constant extension of Markov´s own life foundation. In the "old" pictures of towns (always from the Ukraine) faces of people he has met appear and thus leave their stamp on the way he perceives the world. Markov´s towns will therefore never be completed, they will change all the time and develop as were they themselves organic life. At the same time both he and we transform the towns into the very symbol of where life is lived and how it looks. With his continued tales of life Pavel Makov creates a rich artistic mode of expression which opens inwards in pictures so that you are given the opportunity to participate yoursellf. In the same way as our own Palle Nielsen he seems to want to make pictures of... the unending story about the cultural development and thus be an artistic answer within the world of painting to the Italian author Italo Calvino´s small but excellent novel The Invisible Towns. But one could hurry along oneself and experience the fairy tale in Vejle-Allested. It is open every day, but one could also call 62692636 and get directions.

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