MOSCOW.- Moscow Museum of Modern Art and PROJECT FABRIKA are opening a personal exhibition by Moscow artist Elena Potyeva. The central theme of her work is the perfection and harmony of the human body. We can see this if we freeze movement stopping motion at a defined point. A body, magnified many times and shown in fragments becomes an abstract object possessing an expressive shape. The essence of this expressiveness is in the intellectual, emotional and physical tension.

Elena Potyeva explores classical concepts of art, such as rhythm and motion, depth and flatness, lines and balance. The artist’s works differ in their subject and technique, but one can perceive the author’s signature style in each of them. It can be expressed with such words as stringency, control, and balance. Many of the works are highly complicated in technique; but in the end, the compositions are neat and balanced. The author’s exploration of technique and staging seems to be aimed at paradoxically achieving something that is utterly simple and reconciled. In a way, it’s the essence of a pure reflection.

In her creative work, Elena Potyeva uses a wide range of sources drawn from the depths of her visual memory. For instance, shots of movement and plasticity resemble the experiments of the 1920’s. However, in distinction to her predecessors, Elena Potyeva’s communication with the model and the epoch is not obvious and doesn’t matter much. Here movement is not an impulse, not a spontaneity; it’s a formula, a sign, a hieroglyph.

The artist herself comments: Body architecture serves as something more than just an accommodation for atoms, molecules and other anatomic units; it’s a home for the soul, for which sake all this has been designed. Here a soul finds its environment, its temple.