Art in the city.
Theses of the program by Center of Contemporary Sculpture and Design “Metaobject”
The main idea of the project is the realization that the city is an open exhibition area. This is a territory of art, an open-air museum. We have huge unused spaces, deserted squares and squares, parks devoid of visual accents. This is the potential of the place. This is not a plowed field for awareness and development. We have the potential for creativity in the form of artists who have something to say, who have an inner creative impulse. This is truly an invaluable and still untapped cultural resource of our country. And of course, the potential of viewers who need impressions, lively emotions, involvement and humanization of urban space.
The main theses of the program “Modern Sculpture in the Urban Environment”.
• Humanization of the urban environment
• Points of attraction
• New tourist attractions
• Visual navigation
• Human scale
• Improving the quality of the urban environment
• Cultural involvement of citizens
• Disclosure and use of the creative resource of the country
• Improving the self-esteem of citizens
Humanization of the urban environment
This is primarily the psychotherapeutic role of art. Urban space, with all the efforts of urbanists, is unnatural for a person. It depresses the psyche by its scale, dynamics, fuss, tension and devalues the uniqueness of human life. Cities, especially megacities, oversaturated with population, are in the background of nervousness and stress, where a person experiences a lack of personal space, where he feels his uselessness and is forced to fight for survival. Where people do not appreciate and do not rejoice at each other, do not greet each other on the streets, where everyone is for himself. It becomes the norm, it becomes the rule. Although in reality it could not be so. The urban environment can be much more comfortable for a person, and public art can make a significant contribution to this process. Art, and especially public art, is the little that can give a response to a person, demonstrate that he is not alone, convince him of the benevolence of the world, move him to a new way of life and relationships. Art that brings a person back to himself, art that evokes lively sincere and deep emotions, which expresses the philanthropy and benevolence of the city towards a person, reminds of those values that bring people together and bring them to a more balanced state. Something Big Human. A hypertrophied feeling, a concentrate, a magnet, a living and warm emitter, something unconsciously consonant, forgotten, crushed inside, lost along the way. Quintessences of some simple and natural states. This is the human dimension in the urban environment. Impulses of love and selflessness, manifested through allegories and images of public art.
Improving the psychological comfort of the city.
A lot of good things have already been done, the territories, parks, squares, boulevards, pedestrian zones have been landscaped. But so far everything looks dull, lifeless, ascetic. It’s like making repairs in an apartment and bringing in the most necessary things, a chair, a table, a bed. Now is the time to fill it with life, warmth, emotions, images, “warm things” so that there is a feeling of a cozy living space.
Relieving tension and stress, switching attention from topical tasks.
A new order of values in the scenario of everyday life. The urban environment is a living space, it is an extension of our home. Urban sculpture should be one that you want to live with, that you want to bring into the house. The presence of art in the city is a constant reminder of the existence of a different angle of perception of life, which creates a deeper and more ambiguous reading of everyday life. Increasing the self-esteem of citizens. Identification with the place and self-identification, self-esteem of the townspeople themselves. That is, the realization that I live not just on some street or in some inconspicuous courtyard, but next to a remarkable place. Remarkability and distinctiveness are very important psychological factors of self-identification.
Points of Attraction / Human Scale /
Interaction Modern urban sculpture is an effective tool for architectural and planning tasks of macro and micro urbanism. These are visual and emotional accents and dominants that organize space, compositional nodes, points of attraction, iconic elements of the navigation system. Of course, to a greater extent, the appearance of the city is formed by architecture, but even in an ideal city, urban sculpture is needed as an object of a human scale. A person needs proportionate and emotional elements of the urban environment with which to interact and be photographed. These are signs, spirits of the place, things for the soul. Meeting places and leisure activities. This is the “human face of the city”.
Сultural involvement
Public demonstration of cultural processes, instilling interest in fine arts, involvement in the world of art, education of taste, expansion of visual experience, inducement and stimulation to complex internal processes of rethinking the artistic image, development of abstract, associative and figurative thinking. Modern urban sculpture is perhaps the only type of fine art that can be taken out into the public space of the city and exist in the open air. This is a very important factor. The well-known slogan of “art to the masses” can be maximally expressed precisely by sculpture and art objects in the urban environment. The world of contemporary art is hidden from the public. This is a closed area of museums and exhibition halls. All museums are puzzled by the question of how to attract visitors. But in the end, the vast majority of people still pass by. This world seems to be under water, and to an uninitiated person, far from art, only those rare artifacts that appear, emerge to the surface in the public spaces of the city, can be seen. City sculpture itself goes out to people, becomes a part of their daily life. Even works that are not entirely clear, or difficult to understand, eventually penetrate the minds of citizens, transforming superficial clip perception into a more in-depth and meaningful one. They develop an aesthetic outlook, and visual experience, an understanding of the depth and complexity of a work of art. The passer-by time, from time to time passing by a work of art, begins to notice the variety of shades of psycho-emotional impact. At the same time, the axial idea of the work, becomes clearer, which, as a constant, remains unchanged, despite the changing states of the viewer himself.
Improving the quality of the urban environment
Sculpture has always been an attribute of luxury. This is an expensive art form, primarily because of the high selfcost. Street sculpture is roughly comparable to the price of a car. Look how many hundreds of thousands of cars fill the city, create many kilometers of traffic jams, is it possible to compare the visual and psychological effect of a street sculpture with one car. The city receives art objects that set a new qualitative level of improvement. At the same time, these works simultaneously become the property of everyone and everyone individually. That is, new unifying values are emerging. The personal-public is the dialectic of a new era, a new culture and a new consciousness.
[ autotranslation ]
Link to website CCAD Metaobject : www.meta-object.com