Ablakova Natalya Borisovna

Collection of Contemporary Art, Tsaritsyno State Museum-Reserve, Moscow; National Museum, Prague, Czech Republic; Cultural Center, Brno, Czech Republic; Gallery 'ASPEX', Portsmouth, UK; Portsmouth City Museum, UK; Collection of A. Babulevich, Moscow; Kolodzei Art Foundation, USA; L. Talochkin, Moscow; M. Milius, Tartu, Estonia; P. Novitsky, Warsaw, Poland; Kostaki Gallery, Athens, Greece; Young Artist’s House, Budapest, Hungary. MAILART

Solo exhibitions include: 1989 'Natalya Ablakova and Anatoly Zhigalov. Works 1961-89'. Gallery 'Third Eye', Glasgow, UK; 1990 'TOTART. N. Ablakova and A. Zhigalov. 1960-90.' 'Kashirka', Moscow; 1991 'Journey to the Edge of D. (New Works 1990-91)', 'Kashirka', Moscow; etc. Group exhibitions span from 1974 to 1998 across Russia and numerous countries in Europe, as well as the USA, including notable events at Venice Biennale, Art-Moscow, and exhibitions in New York, Budapest, and Prague.

TOTART is truly both a national and international art. TOTART is 'total presence' in a 'total situation.' In this 'total presence', from which one cannot escape, the viewer encounters the 'object' or 'action', before or during which they become involved in a situation of choice. The TOTART artist does not play with the constructions of ideological language and the realities of social life, maintaining a distance between themselves and these, but rather enters into and plunges into the deep, nourishing waters of the collective unconscious, discovering its original roots and connections, and giving them their true name. The 'Research Project on the Essence of Art in Relation to Life and Art' (TOTART) pays considerable attention to the further development of constructive elements in painting, real space, word, etc., as a form-shaping and socio-cultural (sign) principle. The project is related to Russian constructivism and its utopia; however, negative historical experience leads to anti-utopia, to the debunking of the technological pathos of constructivism. The 'signs of the avant-garde' are introduced into the expressive space of the painting and combined with figurative elements deliberately 'externally', emphasizing their ambivalence and the ambivalent attitude towards them, indicating not 'continuity', but a 'break'—a break within a 'homogeneous' integral socio-cultural fabric. Expression fulfills the function of 'relation' and real time, while the geometric ('appropriated') sign—of a certain cultural coordinate, relativized by this relationship.

...the wheel is also a kind of archetype, often encountered in paintings... The wheel is the limit of polysemy. It is socially colored as the 'red wheel'; it threads 'cultural-archeology' onto itself—the traces of sacred themes: the wheel of Buddha; the wheel of heavenly chariots; ...the wheel is akin to solar symbols, along with arrows pointing to proto-Aryan archetypes; and the avant-garde tradition's wheel—the Duchamp bicycle wheel that spun the coil of the 'readymade genre', only to, after wandering far beyond painting, return by the same wheel, rolling back to its original circles by the will of the TOTARTists, whose nomadic chariot, by whim of history, found itself on the surface of painting reborn from oblivion, as on newly discovered land. The circle of return is closed, pressing into the epicenter of writing a mark-ideogram-seal of the wheel, a 'TOT-archive' stamp. Centrifugal forces of cultural intertexts are drawn together by the hermeneutic circle of dialogue-understanding-interpretation. The divergent converges, involved in the cyclic rhythm of circular movement; the play of differences strung on the rim of wheels, through the gaps of which the winds of West and East blow at once. Is this also Eastern mysticism?—the spinning of mentality by psychedelic 'wheels' to 'ride' into the empty center. Dizzying rotation where origin and outcome coincide. But this Eastern circularity is complemented by a linear dash, by the ability to 'shoot from a bow' and conquer living spaces. This is the dynamic of the European will, in restless pursuit of change and a 'revaluation of values', pushing the chariots in search of the new and the unknown.
S. Kuskov. From the article 'TOTART Today, or Journey to the Edge of Painting.' - 'Creativity', 1990, No. 11

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...It is noteworthy, however, that 'domestic' performance did not achieve adequate looseness or homely intonations: quite the opposite, apartment actions created tense spaces, often aggressive and uncomfortable... On the floor a white paper ball, above—a powerful light source, in the corner a seated person with a newspaper—such was the external backdrop which the viewers of the 'Black Cube' performance (TOTART, 1980) saw as they entered, one by one, into the inner space of a black cube made of lightproof paper. The object arrangement was frankly non-individualized, not requiring long looks or immersion, and could only be perceived as openly foreign in the space of a private apartment. The person in the black cube wrapped the ball in a newspaper, set it on fire, and left, sealing the cube. The newspaper burned in the empty, unseen space. In complete darkness the cube was opened, smoke burst out. The lightproof shell was destroyed and burned in the field. In relation to the private space outside the performance, these destructive actions, however, acquired recuperative meanings. The logic of apartment performance was usually built without consideration for the private context of its existence. It appealed to scales transcending those accessible to an individual, referring to social or cultural mythology, to the collective, the universal, etc. Thus, it as if indicated the absence in culture of spaces in which events and actions commensurate with an individual or private person could be meaningful precisely as a fact of culture. Spaces constructed to unique measures...
E. Bobrinskaya. From the article 'Restored Interval'. - 'Art', 1989, No. 10.