"Stem by stem"
multimedia project. Artists: ESCAPE - Valeriy Ayzenberg, Anton Litvin, Liza Morozova; Curator: Anna Romanova. With the participation of RAVENSCOURT GALLERIES , Art-Moscow Fair. Central Artist's House, Moscow

Each new work of art has a background of voluntary or involuntary immersion in the history of art and culture. A work about decapitation, for instance, automatically evokes a multitude of historic reminiscences. ESCAPE's project "Stem by Stem" is no exception. It recalls all the possible images from the canon, where the great masters of the past chose not the righteous martyr or the cruel executioner as the hero of their works, but the neck. The idea of "Stem by Stem" is close to these traditions, but only by going down the path of history step by step, or stem by stem, does the artists' idea become clear. The artists severed the head of a flower, and captured the event in the video "Stem by Stem" (2"). Even after the beautiful tulip heads were decapitated, the stems remain alive - they are recorded for eternity on 4 large-format photographs (150х200 cm each). The artists employed macrophotography in order to highlight the similarities between the cut tulip stems and the axed necks of martyrs. The same goes for the severed tulip heads, which the artists painstakingly reproduced in tiny plaster buds and assembled as a hanging object (h: 200). A wilted or headless flower has no value, but the "added value" of art increases the actual price of flower thousand times. But the visible cruelty of the artists is deceiving. Behind these manipulations hides an ironic gesture of artists who remember that a flower is alive as long as its bulb still lives.