The Yay Gallery proudly presents “The Other City”, a joint attempt by Azerbaijani artists Huseyn Hagverdiyev and Rashad Alakbarov to comprehend and capture the spirit of the megapolis, eternally young and never sleeping, every day renewing and regenerating itself. The exhibition will be running at Yay Gallery from September 27 to October 27.
The city seen through the eyes of two artists has many faces: dynamic and prickly, deceptive yet honest, bracing and a cauldron of stress, repelling and attracting at the same time. It makes us secluded and free, steels the nerves, removes stereotypes and fears, exchanging them for new ones.
Our shadows flicker on the concrete walls of its buildings and we ourselves gradually merge with its lights and mists, delighting in filling the lungs with its smog.
Feelings of an artist living in a megapolis are heightened, he learns how to see beauty in concrete slabs, delighting in the emotive power of metal constructions. The modern city no longer hides itself away behind fortress walls, it reaches heavenwards with towering office blocks made of glass and metal.
The city means nerves made of steel, orderliness of confined spaces, a concise algorithm of life…
Rashad Alakbarov creates installations that, like the city medium itself, consist of metallic elements but assembled in such an improbable, fantastic way that the shadows they cast transform themselves into portraits of people. The results of the artist`s work are spellbinding. In each of his painstakingly created compositions he endeavours to draw on a cold wall using light and shade.
The same severity, monochromaticism, precision of lines is present in the graphic art of Huseyn Hagverdiyev that evokes associations with the grey-brown complexion of the city. Each of his graphical works generates a concept of the bustling street viewed from the city rooftops and garrets. If you look more attentively the lines of expressways will emerge into view with a whole swarm of crawling cars and you can make out the twilight sky in the frequent hatching pattern of high-voltage power lines and satellite dishes. This is a city of tenement blocks with their imprisoned citizens, each of which feels part of a huge human anthill. It vibrates and buzzes, filled with a restless existence and joyless arousal. Aimless movement along dusty alleyways and the ash from dozens of cigarettes – that`s the city.
However, as the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze remarked: “Within every city there is always another city”. Within the modern severe city of businessmen and successful people, of great hopes and disappointments, exists a mystical city.
This is understood when you glance at Rashad Alakbarov`s installations penetrated with a deep psychological logic. The play of light and shade engenders a feeling of the illusory nature of the surrounding world. The city ghost lives at night and dissolves at the light of dawn. The artist`s works are fragile and can only exist in a dark room. Outlines of building and silhouettes of people can just be made out like distant events filter through the mists of memory.
Huseyn Hagverdiyev, national artist of Azerbaijan from 2003, graduate of the Azimzadeh Baku State Academy (1975) and the Mukhin St. Petersburg Academy (1980). The artist works with various materials and various genres including sculpture, painting, drawing and monumental art, gravitating to large forms. He is the author of a sculptured statue of the Virgin Mary in Baku Cathedral and a mosaic panel on an epic theme installed at the Sangachal Terminal.
Rashad Alakbarov was born in 1979 and graduated fro Azerbaijan State University with a degree in “Decorative Arts” in 2001. The artist earned fame for his installations in which a virtuoso use of light and shade combine with a serious historical and cultural agenda. In 2012 Rashad Alakbarov took part in the Festival of Islamic Art in Sharjah (OAE). His works have twice been displayed within the context of the International Venice Biennale – in 2007 (in the official Azerbaijani pavilion) and in spring 2013 (as part of the exhibition “Love me Love me Not” in the YARAT pavilion).
AzerTAc