Chain of connections: Natalia Kraevskaya

21 May - 12 June 2010

Kraevskaya’s principle position in her investigation into the aesthetics of kitsch is non-judgmental, indeed she accepts it and readily operates in this ‘terribly tasteless’ genre. The artists and art historians that study mass culture and maintain a safe critical distance from it are a dime a dozen. Artists that are prepared to immerse themselves in the material and study it from within can be numbered on one hand (although the list include such international stars as Jeff Koons and Pierre and Gilles)... Kraevskaya reproduces the aesthetic aspirations of the people, repeatedly thickening and multiplying them — and it would be mockery or snobbery, if it was not done without genuine love, if the artist didn’t fix herself in the realisation of each of her saccharine and thoroughly false images.

Anna Matveeva, exhibition curator