Olga Chernysheva. The Happiness Zone

The Zone of Happiness exhibition shows four Olga Chernysheva's videofilms (The Unknown, Self-Studying, Dionysius Steamer, Train), as well as a series of drawings and watercolours created by the artist on the basis of her video- and photo-works. Olga Chernysheva's video installations use documentary shootings made by the artist in central Russia in 2003 and 2004. Olga Chernysheva is one of those modern artists who have not only started working with video installations, but also perfectly understand and fulfil the specific aesthetics of the genre, which is related to the moving of a film from an auditorium to an exhibition room. The plot in an installation repeats itself constantly, so that the film as such is deprived of a historical perspective and ceases to be narrative. Forming a ring, it presents an ideal medium for expressing the idea of repetition and the cyclic recurrence of life. Observing her characters, Olga Chernysheva leaves the frame composition invariable for the whole duration of the film, demonstrating the fragile balance of the film movement and the picture quiescence. Taken from life, the characters of the artist's video works are involved in routine, reiterative, monotonous movement. Doomed to move in cycles, they serve as an allegory of a timeless, non-social existence. Olga Chernysheva graduated from the Cinema Artists Department of the All-Russian State Institute for Cinematography and the State Academy in Amsterdam. The artist lives and works in Moscow and in Amsterdam. The exhibition is organised with the help of the Stella Art Gallery (Moscow)