«‎White noise». A large-scale solo exhibition of artist Natalia Zanchevskaia opened at the All-Russian
Museum of Decorative Arts, Moscow with the participation of the Ingallery Gallery.

2022 ’’White noıse’’, The All-Russian Museum of Decoratve, Applied and Folk Art, Moscow

November, 2022 a large-scale solo exhibition of artist Natalia Zanchevskaia opened at the All-Russian Museum of Decorative Arts, Moscow with the participation of the Ingallery Gallery.The exposition included paintings and graphics of various formats — from canvases several meters in size to small sheets.

The title of the exhibition refers to the phenomenon of «white noise» – a combination of multi-wave sounds of the same intensity. It is believed that such a noise is the first thing that a baby hears while in the mother’s womb — the beating of her heart, the work of internal organs, the noise of blood in the vessels. The female image is key for the artist. The images seem to be weightless reflections of a transcendental world that penetrate our world through a portal created from a combination of paints and canvas. In them, you can see the images of ancient female deities, personifications of the forces of nature, or the visible embodiment of the human soul – tender, a little vulnerable, but incredibly strong in the feeling and experience of its own freedom. Natalia Zanchevskaia’s female characters magically combine something deeply personal with something extremely generalized, close and understandable to every person.

There are too many words, too much information… It impresses, it shocks, its abundance wearies. And, in the end, it all turns into White noise. Listen to your heart — live with your heart. Fly. Do. Help. Dream. Think. Share. Do not just hear — but listen; do not just look — but see; do not just tell — but speak.

The information — possibly the primary value of contemporary culture. Thanks to modern technologies, information is generated and disseminated at incredible speed. We all live amidst information flows, sometimes without any chance to emerge even for a moment, to comprehend what is happening, to become aware of and accept our own feelings and emotions.

It is precisely in the informational environment today that almost all aspects of personality formation are realized, whether it be work, education, or leisure, which, of course, gives humanity many advantages but also harbors very real dangers. Alvin Toffler aptly marks the excess of information as an «information explosion,» characterizing the intensity of processes associated with its consumption and dissemination, but it can also be interpreted as something that has a destructive effect on the individual’s personality. Information overload leads to the emergence of a kind of phenomenon called information noise, which prevents the formation of a comprehensive picture of the world and orientation amid thousands of conflicting voices.

The ever-increasing need to abstract from distracting factors finds expression in the concept of minimalism at all levels of everyday life: in minimalist interiors, which try to reduce the level of visual noise as much as possible; in the philosophy of digital minimalism, when a person limits their use of digital technologies; in strict, minimalist art, which focuses on aestheticizing simple forms.

The exhibition by artist Natalia Zanchevskaia, «White Noise,» provides us with exactly such an opportunity: to abstract from external irritants, to spend some time alone, to replenish internal resources. To achieve her artistic goals, Natalia Zanchevskaia uses a minimum of expressive means. The color palette is exquisitely restrained, based on natural paints, similar to the shades of earth, leaves, sky, and wind, as if used since the dawn of civilization. The artist’s canvases are airy, filled with intoxicating freedom and silence, so dense that the beating of one’s own heart is felt like thunder. The expressiveness is not based on color but on line — delicate, lyrical, reminiscent of the enthusiastic singer of lines like Amedeo Modigliani. Jean Cocteau wrote extensively about the «line of the soul,» almost elevating this concept to an existential category: «In a sense, the line is the style of the soul, and if it changes, curls up — there is no soul in the creation, it is dead.» In a sense, Natalia Zanchevskaia inherits this tradition; in her paintings, the line is not just a way to outline the silhouette. The refined rhythms of lines organize the space of the canvas, permeate it, connecting spatial planes, and, moreover, extend like humming wires under tension, from the past to the future, from the artist to the work, and from the work to the viewer.

The female image is key to the artist’s canvases. Delicate female silhouettes, incredibly organically interacting with the rest of the space, seem weightless reflections of the transcendent world, penetrating into our world through a portal created from a combination of colors and canvas. In them, one can discern images of ancient female deities, personifications of the forces of nature, or tangible embodiments of the human soul — tender, slightly vulnerable, but incredibly strong in experiencing and feeling one’s own freedom. In Natalia Zanchevskaia’s female characters, something deeply personal magically combines with the most generalized, close, and understandable to every human being.

In most cases, we see one central character on the canvases, but sometimes it splits or even becomes tripled. Thus, the work of art is enriched with a temporal dimension, filled with movement, but in this case, it seems more about emotional states, spiritual impulses, than about real movement in ordinary time. Natalia Zanchevskaia’s canvas space is mythopoetic, reminiscent of sacred rituals, which performed a very important creative function in human life: they reminded that no matter how small a person is relative to the scale of the world around him, he is a part of cosmic harmony, once born out of primeval chaos.

As the writer Thomas Mann said at the beginning of the 20th century: «Myth gives the ability to see in reality the higher truth; it gives a smiling knowledge of the eternal, the everlasting, the immutable, of the scheme in which and according to which the seemingly individual lives, not suspecting in its naive self-conceit of its primacy and uniqueness, to what extent his life is a formula, a repetition, a journey along deeply trodden paths.»

A walk through Natalia Zanchevskaia’s exhibition is also a kind of journey, a return to the sources, full of inexhaustible truth, akin to the hero’s journey in ancient tales through the realms beyond. The white noise gradually recedes, the dazzling purity is replaced by colorful spots, silence is filled with sounds — the real world takes its place. But now it is perceived anew, looks cleaner and fresher, as if washed by a spring rain.

We return renewed, with a healed spirit, ready to defend our ideals in a world where it is easy to despair and believe that your voice will be lost and remain unheard. But perhaps there is no more important skill for a person than to listen to their heart and give others light and hope for the world even in the darkest times.

Cultural critic Rita Belokopytova