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"Win/Lose",
Liza Morozova, ESCAPE gallery, Moscow
Press:
What does it mean to win or to lose in the contemporary art? What
does it mean to win or to lose in life? To win?/To lose? For someone
it is one and the same and for the other these are two absolutely
unrelated to each other questions.
So, we'd write them with a slash "win/lose".
These questions logically and naturally arise in the life of a person
and in the creative life of an artist on the definite stage, when
a certain leg of way has been accomplished, some success achieved
and it is necessary to make the choice to make the next step.
 Concerning
Liza Morozova, whose first personal exhibition opened in the ESCAPE
gallery, it may be admitted that the motif of the internal and external
success, marginality, appears soon after she had reflexed on her
learning experience and on belonging to her first artistic society
- "Emergency Exit" group from Tsarskoe Selo. As some sort
of summary of almost five years of work with the ESCAPE group, crowned
this year with deserved success, came the first big award at a most
established art-festival (Workshops of Art Moscow), and the following
series of engagements to take part in massive projects. Finally
- the exposition on the "Viewing Pad", where the group
had to cast a retrospective look upon itself.
And here, as a matter of fact, the ESCAPE saw its own history as
the history of Liza Morozova's reincarnations in the projects of
the group - and that's a sign. And the last publication of the artist
("Art Journal" #50), devoted to the school of Yury Sobolev,
Morozova's teacher and guru, also seems a sign.
 Thus,
both for the artist herself and for the entire ESCAPE project, Liza
Morozova's exhibition became the logic ending of some inner cycle
and looked as a summary. As a sign of transition to a new state.
However, "Win/lose",
didn't outline a sharp change in the language of the former Liza
Morozova's projects. We see the same polysemy, the minimalism of
gesture, autobiographicalism typical for Liza and remarkably free
synthesis of techniques.
Numerous objects - mainly edible - are photographed so that the
feeling of uncountable quantity is created. In each photo this quantity
includes an object that is cognate to the whole mass, but visually
different from its components. That is, outstanding from the mass.
Among the dirty potatoes there is one clean-washed, in the cluster
of black grapes - there is one white grape, in the string bag with
eggs - there is one boiled and shelled…
 As
it turned out to be, the metaphor win/lose is conventional enough.
Above other things, the story of a "white crow" is visible
here. (In case you don't see anything but the photographs.) But
Liza Morozova involves the viewers into some actioning (that becomes
an organic whole for each particular viewer - with the beginning,
climax, denouement and even an intrigue) and adds a video-installation
to the exposition. All this breaks down the binary univocacy of
the photographic images.
And what does exist except good luck/bad luck? Let's take Stalker,
a man with a supersensible psychological apparatus - did he win
or lose? Having got what the others haven't got, from their point
of view he has rather lost than won. His gift looks like a punishment,
the sign of loss. Actually, the point isn't this. The outsider exists
out of the scale "win?/lose?", he just provokes the two
(the winner and the looser) to think about the meaning and significance
of their own status (win/lose).
 Why
Stalker? The installation itself brings about associations with
the texture of Tarkovsky's films. The image of an old faucet, projected
to the wall, the sound of dripping - is a meditative texture resembling
the poor in coloring, as though monochrome, space of the screen
adaptation of the "Picnic". And the water, and the monotonous
sound give here the image of the same - not endless, but limitless
- time of a human life, that flows in the same measured and irreversible
way, that the film does.
The floor of the gallery is scattered with the "Sprint"
duckets. You may pick up any. While doing this you may succumb to
temptation and wish luck for yourself, opening it. It is in vain:
even if you win the prize - it's impossible to get it. The same
as it is impossible to win.
The question is - are there any losers in this case? And the next
- is there a point in asking this question?
Maybe we should just live. In
art. Being a white grape. And when the people considering themselves
winners or losers will go past you - let them see that "the
only one" is the category where no distinctions work any more.
Andrew Kudryashov "Moscow
Art Magazine " #54, 2004.
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