Ali Gasanov – Cathedral spy

For his first personal exhibition in Saint-Petersburg, the Azerbaijan artist Ali Gasanov discloses different sides of his art. He veers off his past views on the art representation and uses new techniques.

The title “The Cathedral Spy” refers to the artist social status as an outsider chronicler of the present time. His “mission” is to watch and then to re-transcript what he has seen through his art. In this new project which combines painting, video, music, and sculpture, Ali Gasanov expresses the idea of a guard over the art creator and his materialized actions.

Ali Gasanov’s paintings are of delicate and tender colors though the images are acute and impressive This wild combination of diffused contours and neat contours on a similar ground can be compared to the memory pictures or to the dreams: the main motive is very clear but the environment fades away.

The squirrels main’s installation underlines more the staginess of the silhouettes than any symbolical implication.The squirrels’ space allocation is dictated by the information admission ceremonial and its absorption. The main idea of Ali Gasanov is that the artist acts as a contemplator at the beginning and as a chronicler afterwards. In this context, the squirrels play the role of technical creatures acting as communication agents who bring to the artist what he needs in order to build his fictional world. As in the movie “Charlie and Chocolate Fabric” by Tim Burton, the squirrels behave as ubiquitous couriers, but here they bring ideas instead of nuts. How the digested material will be transformed into a final art creation , this is the challenge of the Artist. And it will be shown in “the Cathedral Spy ” in Protvor from the 5th of November of 2009 till the 30th of January of 2010.