Korina, Irina (RU)
Carlsberg Tap E
Irina Korina
Born 1977 in Moscow, Russia
Lives in Moscow and Vienna
The Russian artist Irina Korina was a scenographer before she turned to art. And
indeed her art is clearly fuelled by a concern with the staging of material and space. Korina's art often includes cheap ordinary furniture and thereby her works come to involve the everyday. Here they form part of a new staging in which form, space, material, history and society coalesce.
Korina has created several works that take their cue from various artificial materials. Under communist rule artificial marble and imitations of expensive woods were associated with high social status in her home country. This is what Korina has integrated in works with political undertones such as her creation of an entire full-size tank made from materials that derive from demolished Soviet-Era kitchens. Using a material that says one thing, combined with a new absurd form that says something completely different, allows the artist to link notions of the home, which is otherwise private, to political history.
For U-TURN, Korina has not constructed a tank, however, but an 'isba', a traditional Russian country cottage which she has faced with faux wood wallpaper. Furthermore, the cottage is surrounded by large flames in the same material. In Russia the isba is virtually a national symbol along the lines of the Danish allotment gardens. In Korina's version the cottage covered with faux wood facing becomes a symbol of a fake feeling of authenticity and national solidarity. This feeling is now lost, but in today's Russia many are trying to recreate it. Korina's Isba (2008) explores material, form and space in a very bodily way. She represents a contemporary a branch of Russian art that takes its point of departure seriously, but nonetheless expresses a humorous distance to the reality and the history of which the artist herself is a product.
-MHB
Lives in Moscow and Vienna
The Russian artist Irina Korina was a scenographer before she turned to art. And
indeed her art is clearly fuelled by a concern with the staging of material and space. Korina's art often includes cheap ordinary furniture and thereby her works come to involve the everyday. Here they form part of a new staging in which form, space, material, history and society coalesce.
Korina has created several works that take their cue from various artificial materials. Under communist rule artificial marble and imitations of expensive woods were associated with high social status in her home country. This is what Korina has integrated in works with political undertones such as her creation of an entire full-size tank made from materials that derive from demolished Soviet-Era kitchens. Using a material that says one thing, combined with a new absurd form that says something completely different, allows the artist to link notions of the home, which is otherwise private, to political history.
For U-TURN, Korina has not constructed a tank, however, but an 'isba', a traditional Russian country cottage which she has faced with faux wood wallpaper. Furthermore, the cottage is surrounded by large flames in the same material. In Russia the isba is virtually a national symbol along the lines of the Danish allotment gardens. In Korina's version the cottage covered with faux wood facing becomes a symbol of a fake feeling of authenticity and national solidarity. This feeling is now lost, but in today's Russia many are trying to recreate it. Korina's Isba (2008) explores material, form and space in a very bodily way. She represents a contemporary a branch of Russian art that takes its point of departure seriously, but nonetheless expresses a humorous distance to the reality and the history of which the artist herself is a product.
-MHB