Games with characters 1989

Editor: This is Vasiliy Ryabchenko's "Games with Characters" from 1989, executed with acrylic paints. There’s something quite unsettling about these distorted figures against the deep blue backdrop. How do you interpret this work? Curator: Well, immediately, I'm drawn to the materiality. The visible brushstrokes in the acrylic application speak to the physical act of creation, the artist's labor present right there on the canvas. Given its production in 1989, just before the collapse of the Soviet Union, how do you see the materials contributing to its meaning? Editor: That's interesting... maybe the relative accessibility and cheapness of acrylic paint reflect the economic conditions of the time? A contrast to, say, oil paints, used in grander, more official art? Curator: Exactly! This connects to the Neo-Expressionist movement and the context within the Eastern Bloc. What was available? How did the means of production influence the message being conveyed? The very “stuff” becomes a comment on artistic freedom, or lack thereof, in a transforming society. Does the canvas size strike you as typical or atypical? Editor: It's not huge, certainly. Maybe speaking to a need for portability or even a scarcity of resources to work at larger scale? Curator: Precisely. It shifts our understanding away from some grand, timeless vision towards something more grounded in daily struggles. This challenges a heroic idea of art, connecting the art piece to real experience of artists in this time period. Editor: I hadn’t thought about the materiality telling that story. I was focused on the figures themselves. Curator: But isn’t that what’s so powerful here? It makes you reconsider the surface meaning, how limitations themselves can inform the very nature of art, what labor and what consumption really entails. Editor: Right. Considering the context alongside the materials gives the painting an added layer of significance. Thank you.