Exhibition

2022

Russian Avangarde center

«Na Shabolovke» gallery

Curators: Alexandra Selivanova, Nadia Plungian

Design: Jane Rzheznikova

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Mixed-media installation, 16’00’’

2019

Producer Anna Buali

Artists: Elizaveta Guseva, Grisha Rakhmilovich, Jane Rzheznikova

Light Design Ivan Vinogradov

Composer Kuzma Bodrov

Video Artist Elena Koptyaeva

Operator Ilya Galkin

Starring: Anatoly Bely, Olga Voronina

Dmitry Krymov produced his installation based on Tintoretto’s Last Supper jointly with the team of the Pushkin Museum Department of Cinema and Media Art. The museum’s participation in film production has transformed its status from a simple witness to the initiator of creating the “new classics.”

In The Last Supper (1563–1564) from the church of San Trovaso, which formed the basis of the work by Dmitry Krymov, the topic of communion comes to the fore. The sympathy for ordinary people passes through the entire art of Tintoretto, who collaborated with the charitable confraternity Scuola di San Rocco for more than twenty years.

In the San Trovaso composition the artist placed the sacred scene in the basement with modest furnishings and portrayed its participants as ordinary people surrounded by everyday details. However, the scene is filled with dramatic energy due to compositional effects: the usual perspective is broken, and the participants are involved in the dynamic circulation of what is happening. Tintoretto’s experimental approach was so much ahead of his time that Jean-Paul Sartre called him the first film director in history.

For Dmitry Krymov, an important dimension of Tintoretto’s art is his attention to the details of everyday life, from which the miracle emerges. Krymov is fascinated by the way the Venetian master used the smallest everyday details to create compositions full of deep emotions that permeate the whole space and engage the viewer. This totality of Tintoretto’s compositions makes them close to theater. Krymov, in turn, develops the multi-layered spatial scenery of The Last Supper and combines cinema and performance in his work.

Following Tintoretto, Dmitry Krymov seeks to show the sublime in the ordinary. Interpreting The Last Supper, he creates another reality at the altar of San Fantin church, based on trompe-l’oeil (visual illusion), which makes the viewers doubt the accuracy of their perception. The scene of the supper is placed in contemporary setting, but it does not end there. Static figures turn into live characters and vice versa. Where our reality ends and where the storyline is played out — remains a mystery and breaks the regular rules of perception of a film narrative.

An important component of this dramatic work is the musical accompaniment. The composer Kuzma Bodrov wrote music specially for this work, drawing inspiration from both the storyline and the visual language of Tintoretto. In graduate school, Bodrov studied the works of Giovanni da Palestrina and the Renaissance music, and later he composed several pieces for the mass of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI.