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even Today the government recommends that everyone – especially older people – to move to the cottage. Away from crowded places, and hence the potential danger. The artist Nikolay Polissky realized the beauty of the outdoors to any pandemic, even in the 1990s when we bought a house in a remote, semi-abandoned village of Nikola-Lenivets. And in 2000-m to year abandoned painting and started doing land art: to build giant objects from èkomaterialy in the field, which in Russia has not been done.

Now Nikola-Lenivets and the festival is based Polissky “Archstoyanie” is known all over the world. And today, natural way of life of the artist may be the solution to many problems in a new reality. On a major new work (field Rouen Cathedral “Proin”), ecoacoustic and the future of the world, we Pohorje with a famous artist.

How life has changed in Nikola-Lenivets for a pandemic?

– How they lived – and live. While it is far. So I’m just worried about all the other people in the world who get sick and die. It’s scary. Of course, everyone has to follow basic hygiene rules. I hope that this plague will pass quickly. I wish you the best. And don’t eat bats!..

the Situation can affect the plans of the festival “Archstoyanie”, the construction of objects?

– no one knows. Now we clean the territory, restoring the objects, build “Proin”, simmer the spring fires. It is easier for us to implement quarantine measures: metro no, planes do not fly, little people.

– the World was divided into “before” and “after”. Your worldview of the artist somehow changed?

I periodically think about the fragility of peace. We often do all sorts of nonsense. You need to spend less resources on all sorts of anti-human stupidity, and think more about their close and distant, who in these moments are getting closer. I think people overestimate the life. Although plague passed and all was forgotten. Land art is just about it – do not accumulate material, it is necessary to live and enjoy. This crisis did in my mirosozidanie not changed, but rather reinforced some things.

You do land art since 2000. This means that a round number?

– Exactly 21 years. Point! One generation has already died, another is raising children and grandchildren. There is a whole family dynasty. Without pathos I want to say that many would not live here if it were not for this strange enterprise. But all the experts said you will die tomorrow. But it still lives. Probably because nobody gives us a lot of money, money one death.

as well as: up to 40 years to do the painting, and then go in a radically different format?

– I was a respected painter, has exhibited paintings and suddenly began to mow the hay. My poor wife was tortured. No one knew the first years. Everyone thought I crazy. The last time I approached the canvas in 2000, before you start making snowmen. As the cut off.

Not bored?

No. I am an artist, and not the creature has a certain skill. Each material turn in the direction of his ideas. I studied for 20 years to become an artist. All this had some time to forget.

“Keep out of contemporary art is meaningless”

who’s the real artist? I think that you first need to undergo a traditional school, then to forget everything and open your path.

– no One knows. In the culture of extra knowledge never hurt. If I knew mathematics or biology, maybe it would be better. Any knowledge is useful.

– How large objects made in 21 years?

– 20 Pieces. One or two a year. But now it was harder, more responsible. Smaller objects do take-out for France and Japan, for example.

– they are All from èkomaterialy. Tree, vine, hay – all of it is short-lived…

– there is Nothing eternal I do not suffer from the fact that it won’t live forever – that will remain, will remain. This is the problem of Museum workers and collectors. Now I do not see artists who make things that can be stored. Everything is decent – it’s a great thing for cities for big money, they are more durable. Or any installation in the Museum, which are then sawn with chainsaws that I have seen in the same courtyard. That is, to keep modern art is meaningless.

Why pointless?

Because before it was the art-the art: something well made, used expensive materials, but now art is not like art. It seems to me that the era of museums in the classic sense – as repositories of treasures – gone.

– What should be the Museum of the future? Art will become part of real life?

I do Not know. People, consuming art is becoming more and more so it should be on the street, mobile. Perhaps more should be temporary. What will remain, will solve most, a temporary and then things will become to make in more durable materials. I don’t expect, when I have a lot of money on expensive materials. Made, played, thrown and burned.

“a Lack of color causes disease”

However, for example, in the Park near chermyanka river and nearby, in the Otradnoye district, for a long time are your two land art object: Chermyanka and “Likhoborskie gate”. Who is taking care of them?

– They are already old, shot about 15 years, I recently specifically looking. Of course, you need to refurbish. The artist is unable to take care of things must be the owner who will work on this to do.

Have the “service manual”?

– there is no one to give it. Built, and then everything is thrown… no nothing. There was another swing, they loved the people, but they broke – master art no. Land art – not bronze Ilyich: loss – and he’s always worth it. Art in Russian cities never had. There were only monuments to Lenin earlier, now – kings.

– Talk about the new project, under construction the second year. “Groin” is a reference to Monet…

– This is a reference to me as a painter in the past. The color is a strange thing. The lack of color causes the disease. I once told people that even if the USSR spent some time in places not so remote that they kept the colored scraps of magazine “Ogonyok”. Just to look at the color. All gray, and they needed something colourful to look at. But then I started printing – ad nauseam.

– so you’re rested from the color?

– Yes. I went to nature. And everything in nature in its own color, everything is very harmonized. Even Armenian artists Martiros Sarian and Ara Arutunyan… If you come to Armenia in summer, everything is brown, scorched with light. They lacked color, so they were so bright.

the North, by the way, the opposite – color, bright, starting with the Northern lights. And in the South the sun burn. I had a rest from color and is now wanted again.

I suddenly remembered the story of art – like a modern painting. The impressionist era – Monet with his series of Rouen Cathedral. He laid there a lot of ideas important to the art of the twentieth century. Was invented by a pixel, which is then used Signac and Seurat dots… pointillism.

But the first was Monet, he tried to stop a moment, its Cathedral then red, then blue, then some gray-brown-crimson. But stop a moment is impossible – everything is changing every second.

When I was a painter, very angry: beginning to write one picture, and during all the changes… And here I suddenly decided to make an object nearly the size of Notre Dame Cathedral – 24 meters in height. It is an object, where the material is painting. I hope this will be interesting.

– You used only a pure color?

– Yes. Although the colors that the Impressionists used together turned into a single plastic. They focused on color. Paint – acrylic, not because it is the most persistent, but because otherwise it would have all suffocated, when painted in the room. Have to paint indoors in winter.

How long does it survive in nature?

– five Years. Then begin to crumble, and it’s not too bad: the color will change naturally under the influence of nature. This has its own charm. I’m not afraid of change: there is a metal frame and it will be possible to change something.

where I started? From the snow and loon, and all the objects died literally for months. When there are other architects began to conserve, restore. But I think it’s wrong because played and will be. If they want to stay in Nikola-Lenivets forever to poslastica, I your things can use as you wish. For a classic land-art aging is one of the life stages of the work. Aging and dying is normal.

“Humble fate is defiant drags”

– it is True that 300 people were working last summer on the construction of “Proana”?

– They are not worked. These are volunteers, they came to a rest on the nature, to live here for free. Work, paint, then a walk. It is a way to have a good time.

I have not counted myself, but the teams were 20 people every week. We love to ride. They have a team, begin to make friends, fall in love, get married. Young people like to come, they have no money, so they fit in volunteering, at the same time your are doing and help us. This is normal.

One of my main principles is not to stubborn life. There is a saying: fate is submissive, rebellious drag. It happened and the whole idea of the art Park. I just saw that there is free land.

the Soviet regime is gone, the farm is gone, and people left. They were willing to fit me into any adventure for little money. And I then something in the city earned and could bring in the beak.

Then another would send humanitarian aid. They had such happy faces in the photos that the French curators asked me: “why are they all happy, we thought that you are all dying of hunger”. Now all the local included in the process?

Looking back 30 years ago when you bought a house in the middle of nowhere, what do you think? Everything was spontaneously and properly turned out?

– Right, wouldn’t have changed anything. I blatantly live in Paradise. And very happy that in 42 years, smooth set up and doing what did not promise any success. And now, more and more people are coming. When I was a painter, I have lots of paintings stood in my tit the basement, it was super annoying and made me sad. Then I came to the conclusion: who cares? And here I have no such issues. About eternity I don’t think. Live cushy people come and rejoice. Why do I cold forever? Fuck it!

at what point the game turned into an art Park?

the Park began with “the Lighthouse” is a 2004-th year. Then we first put a long thing – before this was played. It was necessary that some of us here were, because we were leaving to work in Russia and France. It was another two years before festival. Then came the “Archstoyanie”, and things began to accumulate. I began to put objects in different places.

In recent years, the emphasis is on the performative and musical events. Objects appear smaller than before. Why?

– We, first, can’t find something sensible. Applications send much, but they do not always fall on the countryside. For the big stuff not so much space. I myself greedy. Now I choose places. “Lighthouse”, “Brain”, “Babur”, “Groin”, “White gate” – I collect them on the ground like a puzzle.

I Now took a place by the river where the Park is no more, nothing resolves, and then maybe move to the other side. As always, not enough money for renovation work. And then, I want to here was the theatre. And so it was adapted to the objects that are there, and the space of nature.

Our theatre is not a seat in a dusty chair. I was in such theaters boring. The structure of the film about how the painting is gives birth to nothing. A street theatre I love. Try different – something well get to the light, air. When people came to the theater, it was closed and it sits as a stump, and here, if he didn’t like, he got up and left. Here the right level to keep the viewer in suspense. Liability of another kind.

– Now a lot of talk about the fact that art is entering a new era. Your forecast for the future?

– I try not to think: the pants will tear if striding. I’m sitting here holding a candle. People who use art became much more. It is not elitist. So it goes out into the streets.

Art should be everywhere. Moreover, the land in such numbers agriculture and industry are not necessary. Return the land to nature. To build some sort of economy, we need to involve art. In the world as well – thrown areas enlivened through art. Maybe a consequence of the virus will be the unloading of the cities through the development of digital technologies. We have, for example, there is an object “Remote office”. Interesting ideas rather rodada on a walk than in a stuffy office. You need to use a huge area that is given to us. If we spread ourselves out around the country instead of sitting in a potentially dangerous cities to live and work will become more joyful and more effective.