Maria und Natalia Petschatnikov – Gruppendynamik

Maria und Natalia Petschatnikov sind geniale Illusionistinnen. In der Tradition des Realismus des 19. Jahrhunderts malen und zeichnen sie Dinge und Situationen aus unserer alltäglichen Lebenswelt und bilden aus den verschiedensten Materialien dreidimensionale Objekte. All dies inszenieren sie in ihren Ausstellungen zu einer Gesamtinstallation, die die Unterscheidung von Malerei und Objekt durch zahlreiche Trompe l‘œil -Effekte verwischt.

Ihr Blick ist dabei vielfältig: Sie schauen auf ihr urbanes Umfeld, greifen soziale Themen auf, lassen ihren Blick auf Reisen schweifen – tatsächlichen wie fiktionalen. Sie schauen auf die (Kunst)-Geschichte, verbinden Gegenwart und Vergangenheit, innere und äußere Welt, Fiktion und Wirklichkeit.

Das Künstlerduo stellt häufig ganz alltägliche Gegenstände dar, die wie Artefakte in neue Zusammenhänge gebettet werden. Dies geschieht teils werkimmanent, teils erst durch die installative Anordnung, in der die Gegenstände mit anderen verknüpft werden. Diese Beziehungsstiftungen eröffnen dem Betrachter neue Erkenntnisse und bilden in sich ein Gesamtkunstwerk.

Für die Stern-Wywiol Galerie haben die beiden Künstlerinnen ein Ausstellungskonzept entwickelt, das das Umfeld der Galerie in einem Business-Distrikt aufgreift. In den Galerieräumen werden die Zwillingsschwestern ein Art Morph zwischen Kunst- und Bürowelt schaffen und einen surrealen Kontor-Raum kreieren. Aus gewöhnlichen Büro-Motiven wird ein ungewöhnlicher Ort, der den Betrachter zu außergewöhnlichen Assoziationen inspiriert. Ihre standortspezifische Intervention knüpft dabei an die dadaistische Tradition von Marcel Duchamp an und führt den Diskurs des White Cubes auf eine einzigartige Art fort.

Maria and Natalia Petschatnikov are brilliant illusionists. In the tradition of 19th-century Realism, they paint and draw things and situations from the world of our everyday lives and form three-dimensional objects out of the most diverse materials. In their exhibitions, they combine all of this to stage collective installations that blur the distinction between paintings and objects, by means of numerous trompe l’ œil effects.

In doing so, their views are diverse: They look at their urban surroundings, take up social topics and let their gaze wander on journeys – real and fictive. They look at (art) history, link the past and present, the inner and outside world, fiction and reality.

The artist duo often depicts entirely ordinary objects, which are embedded in new contexts like artifacts. This effect is partly immanent to the works themselves and partly due to their arrangement within an installation in which the objects are mutually interlinked. The relationships established in this way reveal new insights to viewers and form a Gesamtkunstwerk in themselves.

For the Stern-Wywiol Galerie, the two artists have developed an exhibition concept that takes up the gallery’s surroundings within a business district. The twin sisters will generate a kind of morph between the world of art and the world of the office in the gallery’s rooms and create a surreal office space. Ordinary office motifs form a place that is not ordinary and inspires extraordinary associations among viewers. At the same time, their site-specific intervention draws on the Dadaistic tradition of Marcel Duchamp and also elaborates upon the discourse regarding the White Cube in a unique way.

Thinking the unthinkable

Introductory thoughts by Prof Heinz Lohmann
for the opening of the exhibition "Group Dynamics" by Maria and Natalia Petschatnikov
at the STERNWYWIOL GALERIE in Hamburg, 20 January to 22 April 2017

I recently got to know "Dr Watson". Patients can describe their symptoms to him and he then tells them the diagnosis. He even says what percentage he is sure of in his assessment - let's assume 78 per cent. He then names further examinations and analyses that are still necessary to finally clarify the diagnosis - perhaps an X-ray and one or two laboratory values. "Dr Watson" is an intelligent piece of software. It can process around 12,000 specialist publications a day. It reads, analyses, compares the results with other information and finally applies its knowledge. "Dr Watson" can analyse millions of therapy processes and use them to suggest and implement an individualised and optimised therapy. It can support digital workflows and thus make the work of doctors and carers easier. Of course, it can also communicate with robots such as "Pepper" and "Nao" and control their use.

Digitalisation is revolutionising not only medicine, but our entire lives. And we are only at the very beginning. The economy in particular is being radically affected by the changes. Our previously clear images of the world of work are beginning to blur. We are finding ourselves in unclear circumstances. And this is precisely where the artists Maria and Natalia Petschatnikov come in with their exhibition "Group Dynamics". In their installation, they link the art world of the gallery on the ground floor of the commercial building with the world of the offices on the floors above. There is an abundance of drawings, paintings and objects. For example, we discover money, extremely aesthetically depicted, and receipts or envelopes and work folders. The yellow post-its are everywhere. We also identify the typical attributes of the business, such as the managers' "uniform": five shirts, five pairs of shoes, one for each working day of the week, meticulously painted. For Maria and Natalia Petschatnikov, however, business life is a completely alien experience. They have therefore incorporated small "disturbances" into their arrangements. In one of the shirt and shoe combinations, a picture with two pairs of shoes suddenly appears. The painting with one pair of shoes, which actually belongs here, is "hidden" in another part of the gallery.

Maria and Natalia Petschatnikov place their art personnel in this organised business world. The room is populated by dogs and birds. The dogs were photographed on the streets of Berlin, then painted and modelled into 1:1 scale sculptures. The life-size birds represent the three most common species found in cities, namely crows, pigeons and sparrows. To avoid any misunderstanding, the artists are not concerned here with a love of animals or rural idylls, but with the urban contexts of their works. The invisible animal owner at the end of the leash is important for understanding the works.

The artists' world is the urban environment; this is also reflected in their lives. Born in Leningrad / St. Petersburg in 1973, they attended the children's painting school at the Hermitage. At the age of 12, they were already able to achieve exciting work results. They did not receive a classical Russian realism education in their home city. Instead, they studied art at Hunter College in New York and at the École des Baux-Arts in Paris. There they also worked in the studio of the master of assemblages, Annette Messager. A look at their work to date shows that this station was formative for both artists. They then lived in Hamburg for several years and are now at home in Berlin when they are not travelling the world. Their themes represent urbanity, the urban space with its rich facets of culture, leisure and work: subways, museums, flea markets, computers and, today, the offices.

The "photo wallpapers" on the walls of the gallery depict views of the offices from the floors above. Maria and Natalia Petschatnikov took the photos after closing time. They then let their "exotics", such as small toy figures, Brussels sprouts and tomatoes or their birds and dogs, wander into the workspaces and onto the desks. The images created here were further generalised and alienated on the computer. The artists thus hark back to the art history of the 15th and 16th centuries. At that time, exotic fruits in still lifes embodied their own special symbolism. Today, with these interventions in real space, Maria and Natalia Petschatnikov are placing initially unconnected realities abruptly side by side. This irritates the viewer. But that is precisely the aim. In this way, the two artists draw us into a dialogue with their themes. This happens very often in their work. They enter into a dialogue with the viewer. They must first complete their art in their minds. For example, there is a blurred photo in our collection that is perceived as a family picture. In reality, however, it is a blurred photograph of small linen bags of different sizes and colours hanging on thin threads from a pole. We are all familiar with the blurred and yellowed analogue photographs in old family albums with friends and relatives who are only vaguely perceptible. These images are stored in our memory and therefore we fall back on old experiences when perceiving such motifs. This principle also applies to the depiction of animals, which often lack eyes, noses or mouths. The two artists are not interested in the image. This also applies to their realistic paintings. Maria and Natalia Petschatnikov's artistic objects are always embedded in their surroundings. What they create is conceptual art, albeit not in a minimalist form, but extremely expressive. The result is often disturbing for the viewer. "The function of art is to make reality impossible", the playwright Heiner Müller once remarked so aptly.

We live in a time of disruptive developments. We have to say goodbye to the familiar. Algorithms are taking over many tasks previously reserved for humans. In future, "Dr Watson" will know and be able to do almost everything better than us. And what will we have left? The art of Maria and Natalia Petschatnikov shows it very clearly. It is to think the truly unthinkable. There is indeed the first "digital Rembrandt", a great picture that software has "painted" by analysing all known Rembrandt pictures in the computer. However, artificial intelligence only processes what it has learnt. In business, it has always been about breaking away from the conventional, allowing what initially seems crazy, having the courage to dare to do the unfamiliar. The art of Maria and Natalia Petschatnikov can encourage this and thus set a dynamic in motion that is captivating with its creativity. This is why the exhibition "Group Dynamics" fits so wonderfully in this Kontorhaus.