Where the beauty gets created: at Alexandra Paperno’s studio

HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN IN THIS STUDIO? HOW DID YOU FIND THIS PLACE?

I've been in this studio for ten years. I found it in a pre-revolutionary house of the "Life" insurance company. The building is listed as three different addresses on maps: Milyutinsky 11, Sretensky 4, and Little Lubyanka 16. After the Revolution, two more floors were added to the building and the Russian telegraph agency "ROSTA Posters" (also known as ROSTA Windows) was located on those floors. In 1960, the building was remodeled and some spaces were converted into apartments and offices. My studio is located on the fifth floor.

This studio is my personal paradise. When you create large-scale artworks, it's essential to have a stable studio of your own. The artworks require many materials and tools for the creation process. I am extremely lucky to have this space with three windows, as my previous studios were located on the first and second floors and were quite dark. I remember when I had my first exhibition and the artworks were taken away, I saw them for the first time in daylight, as I had only worked under electric lights in my previous studio. The amount of natural light in this studio is astounding.

There are books, albums, materials, and lockers for graphics here. On the opposite wall, I have a special construction of strings that holds my canvases, they take up very little space and do not put pressure on each other.

WHAT’S YOUR DAILY ROUTINE? IN THE INTERVIEW TO RUSSIAN ART FOCUS YOU SAID IT’S GREAT TO GIVE YOURSELF SOME TIME FOR DOING NOTHING TOO, AND I THOUGHT ABOUT US PEOPLE DRAWING TOO LITTLE OF ATTENTION TO THAT

Nevertheless, having leisure time is not always an option for me, since I have become quite a routine person since having children. Even though my older son is 11 years old, I'm still adjusting to it. I come to the studio in the morning and leave in the evening, five days a week. It's challenging for me to not think about time constraints and to work calmly, regardless of how much time I have at the moment.

HAVE YOU ALSO CONSTRUCTED THAT HUGE PILLAR CONNECTING YOUR EXHIBITION AT SHUSEV’S ARCHITECTURE MUSEUM IN THAT PLACE?

Not really, the pillar is 1.5 times bigger than the ceilings in this studio. It was designed by my friends, architects Olya Fomina and Fedya Dubinnikov. I don't have the necessary education to calculate the center of gravity of a column frozen in a fall. The construction of the exhibition was led by Maxim Diyachenko, who built the pillar with great difficulty as the "Ruin" wing is an architectural monument, so nothing can be altered on its walls. That's why we created beautiful music stands with writings on them and they are now in the studio because I don't want to throw them away and I don't have any other place to store them.

DO YOU LOOK OVER YOUR OLD ARTWORKS? I FEEL LIKE I’D BE FEELING NOSTALGIC PRETTY OFTEN IF I WAS LIVING IN A PLACE LIKE THIS

I work slowly, creating only a few artworks each year, some of which get sold. That's why I don't have many of my own works kept. It's great because I tend to repaint them all the time. When I have a new idea, I feel the need to start working on it immediately, and if I don't have a proper canvas for that, I start looking for an old painting to paint over. It's better not to have old works here. Additionally, I need a lot of empty space to properly view a painting, and this studio lacks that. I love working here but not looking at my paintings.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO HAVE A BIGGER STUDIO?

On one hand, having a bigger studio would be very useful as I don't fit well in this space. But on the other hand, it would be difficult for me to move somewhere else because I spend too much time adjusting to a new space and I feel that it's better for me to stay here.

YOUR STUDIO IS DECORATED WITH LOTS OF LITTLE NOTES AND SKETCHES OF FUTURE BIG ARTWORKS…

Yes, there are always many notes and sketches of future artworks, especially when preparing for an exhibition. I use these notes and visual references to help me work. I also have many small notebooks in which I write down and sketch everything that comes to my mind.

WHAT IS YOUR WORKFLOW? YOU SPEND A MONTH CONSIDERING THE IDEA, A MONTH WRITING DOWN THE NOTES AND THEN TWO DAYS TO CREATE THE PAINTINGS. HOW MANY TIME DID YOU SPEND THINKING AND PAINTING AT THAT ARKHYZ RESIDENCE, FOR EXAMPLE?

My workflow is mixed. I come up with ideas for new artworks while I am working on others, as I can't just sit down and think of an idea straight away. When Simon Mraz wanted to organize an exhibition, he called me and told me about the observatory in Lower Arkhyz and the appearance of it, also mentioning the Alanian churches, I ended up having an exhibition in one of those churches. I had some early works with astronomical maps, and Simon wanted to show them there, but since they were already in different private collections, we had to gather them all separately which was difficult. Then I came up with an idea of creating a new artwork and sat down to learn the constellations history. And almost in no time I stumbled upon that strange story of canceled constellations, and just like that, I had an artwork created in my mind on that same day. When I come up with a new idea, I want to start painting as early as I can. I started to make some sketches on paper, and then, after a couple of months, Simon took me and other artists who were participating in the exhibition to the observatory. And then I saw the Alanian church, with no windows and no doors. It was impossible to expose paper works in the church ruins, so I made a special version based on wooden stands just for that exhibition.

YOU ALWAYS ADMIRED THE RUINS, DIDN’T YOU?

I have always admired ruins, I think. I knew some of Sasha Brodsky's works, I studied in one of New York's schools when he was living in America for some time and I visited some of his exhibitions. His etchings were hanging on the walls of my parents' friends. But I didn't plan to make an exhibition about ruins. In fact, I was looking for a neutral white cube space for my "Canceled constellations" since these works were already in the church ruins and I had lots of other exhibitions in strange spaces before that. But when Lisa Likhakhacheva offered me a huge ruin of three floors, which is highly not neutral, highly picturesque, with lots of meanings inside, I decided to make it the center of the exhibition. The ruin is like a space and like an idea. And the name of the exhibition appeared just like that, "A love for yourself among the ruins".

WHAT WAS THE STRANGEST SPACE YOU USED FOR EXHIBITION?

I suppose it was that Alanian church of the X century in the special astrophysics observatory of Lower Arkhyz.

ARE YOU FRIENDS WITH YOUR ART’S COLLECTORS? WE ARE AWARE OF NASTYA RYABTSOVA ONLY.

I have a friendship with some of my art collectors. For example, I am friends with Nastya Ryabstova, our mothers have been close friends since first grade, but we only saw each other when we were kids once and we reconnected as adults. I enjoy maintaining friendships with collectors as it brings joy when someone buys my work and it becomes an opportunity for contact and friendship.

DO YOU COLLECT THE ART YOURSELF?

I don't collect art myself, as I'm a bit of a gambling person and I know I wouldn't stop if I started collecting. I do have some random works of my favorite artists, but they are always connected to random stories. Sometimes they are gifts, sometimes I bought them when my friends could use some help and I could afford it, but not to make a collection.

WHAT ARE YOU WORKING ON RIGHT NOW?

Currently, I'm working on an exhibition that I wanted to open in Kolomna. For the past year and a half, my friend Sveta Shuvaeva and I have been working on it. During the quarantine, my husband and I found an old house in Kolomna that we fell in love with and decided to restore it. Sveta needed a studio to work in and I suggested she come with us to Kolomna, it was a pleasant surprise when she agreed. The exhibition is called "House on Wheels" and it's about modernist houses on legs and the Baba Yaga house as a symbol of a liminal space, transitioning from one world to another, from reality to a fairy tale, from life to non-life, and so on.

HOW DO YOU MANAGE TO NOT BE DISCOURAGED NOW AND NOT GIVING UP WHEN IT SEEMS LIKE MAKING PLANS IS A POINTLESS ACTIVITY?

You have to learn to not make any plans, that’s the first thing. Second, in any situation, communicating with your soulmates always helps. And work, of course, when you are in the mood and you feel like you are doing something, helps a lot.

CAN YOU RECOMMEND SOME BOOK THAT INSPIRED YOU RECENTLY AND COULD INSPIRE SOMEONE ELSE TOO?

Recently, I visited the amazing Museum of Organic Culture in Kolomna. It is located in the Kremlin beside the walls of the Novo-Golutvin monastery in an old wooden house decorated with openwork platbands. The term "Organics" is used by Matyushin. Inside the museum, there are paintings, sketches, jars of pigments from Matyushin's studio, “Soundcolor”, driftwood, reconstructions of musical instruments, many works of Sterligov, some modern artists' works, and a lot of books. The museum impressed me and I bought a compilation of Sterligov's work called "A White Thunder of Winter" which consists of his letters to his beloved Irina Potapova from 1939-1943, poems and drawings.

I was introduced to Sterligov's works by Katya Inozemtseva in the mid-2000s when she was working at the Prone gallery and there was an exhibition of an early cycle of drawings dedicated to the circus, which I will always remember, showing some people in the form of crosses, flying under the circus ceiling. The compilation also includes an essay by Katya about the artist's love letters sent from war to Leningrad during the blockade, filled with, as she says, "such true poetry that reaches the maximum depths of the world, the very bottom of it, makes a spirit come to life, opens it up for those who lived through death and decay."