This is not the first time we have interviewed our participants and the jury. Recently, our press center managed to communicate with a great artist in the style of digital art, a participant in our competition, who was later invited to be a member of the jury - Dmitry Shturm.
Dmitry, please tell us a little about yourself. What do you do? I am sure our participants would be interested to know better about you.
Dmitry: I basically have two types of activities, this is what I do for a living.
By profession, I am a leading web designer who works for a company with government orders. In simple terms - we make sites and services for the state.
Technically, I am an IT specialist, my education is pedagogical. That is, I would have to be a computer science teacher, but I chose web design.
- Didn't it work out with teaching?
Dmitry: everything turned out the way it should have been. Because my dream was to create some things with which a very large number of audiences and users would interact. In fact, this is the whole country, because the state site is a huge traffic, one way or another people go there and it is millions in a month.
Before that, I was engaged in entrepreneurship. We have created websites for business. But observing that after implementation they may not pay off, the customer does not develop them, goes in a different direction.
It was not so interesting, because we build a ship - we put it on the water, transferring the board, and it sinks. # Nbsp; And I wanted such contracts that are calculated for years when the state supports it very well. Plus - this is precisely such an ideological aspect - it is a contribution to the life of other people, that my life does not pass without a trace, in some way I serve other people. This was important to me.
I myself am from the Urals, and I moved to Moscow with this very purpose to live and work, to develop our society, to help my country in this way.
- Let's talk about your work. In what areas of art are you developing?
Dmitry: I have a lot of creative directions. I have not touched only, probably, the sculpture now, everything else is there anyway. This is a huge project with paintings, there is a huge part of isoteric paintings, periodical exhibitions. I create some things with my hands, these are all sorts of figurines, decorations. I just learned to airbrush the last year.
Recently I have been moving away from static, from pictures to the format of live performances. That is, what does it mean? I began to write poetry, they began to invite me to read. Over time, this action, literally in 4-5 months, developed into such a very theatrical format. A creative image was born there, a concept, a mood was born. # Nbsp; When I am invited to read in different institutions, usually these are creative evenings. There, in bars, restaurants, from time to time I see the audience, the response in the faces of the viewer - this is all quite interesting. But this format is different from pictures, it is very provocative in nature.
I am a person who loves to shock, to draw attention to myself. Right now we are talking to you, I am quite calm, adequate, reasonable, but on the stage everything goes, on the contrary, it is such a spring that is compressed in real life.
- An emotional outburst?
Dmitry: Yes. That is, it unclenches, there with tenfold strength, this is a show of a bad toastmaster.
I can pull people onto the stage. Collect something there, give them something, the viewer is involved in the game. The beginning was also so one-sided, a monologue of reading poems all the same provocative. And now many people know that if I go out, now there will be some kind of "minced meat", there will be something interesting and definitely something will be remembered.
So, under this action, a creative image is born and now it is turning into a video format, now we are starting to shoot all this. Now I am creating a project called "Theater Life". There are invited poetesses who read my poems and unfolds me into some kind of small theatrical action. So that a person does not just read in front of the camera, but interacts somehow and ... I like it, but sometimes it happens very harshly with the topic that rises there, this is a provocation, there is no other way. This is what I am doing in a nutshell.
- When looking at your Instagram, we saw some pretty impressive posts. Tell us more about this project, what inspired you to create it?
Dmitry: Yes. This project has actually already been completed, it was called "Burgamitrix".
These are one hundred works of portraits of one hundred real people, and out of these hundred works, one person wanted to be in a mask. Therefore, if you look at everything, there is one work where a person wished to be in a mask and did not take pictures. I would call it just a warm-up. At some point, I wanted to warm up and work on volume. Of course, one hundred portraits would have been technically impossible to draw, taking into account the real workload. Therefore, they use digital art computer technologies, in which, in principle, I work the overwhelming majority of the time, that is, it is part of computer programs.
Since I am a web designer myself, a programmer by education, I am primarily interested in using the latest technologies in contemporary art, because before that I did projects with phantom reality.
When the picture hangs on the wall, we point the phone and in the phone it starts to come to life through a certain application, that is, there is movement, the girl throws up her hands. I try to integrate all this with both conventional programs and creative neural networks.
- An excellent project, I am sure it impressed many! It is very interesting, you have quite different directions. What do you consider to be an achievement in your work? It is interesting to know your success story.
Dmitry: there were a lot of them. Most of all, of course, I like exhibitions if we are talking about paintings. When I get to the gallery for an exhibition, for me it is a small medal, I contributed something.
The main task, no matter how pathetic it may sound, is to enter the centuries. Maybe not on a global scale to become a super-famous artist, but nevertheless make sure that history does not throw me off its walls too quickly. Well, this is a story about a long job. Here, unfortunately, this has been accumulated over the years, maybe even decades, through fruitful and systematic work.
But most of all I enjoy exhibitions when it comes to paintings. Well, objectively, I can say that I am not particularly interested in sales in this direction, the task is different. As soon as the sale begins, as soon as all this is put on some commercial track, the very ideological grain is lost. One way or another, a person who wants to buy makes changes, let's call it, in the language of design, he wants to turn it around a little. And I have a different task, I want to give, just give what I do.
As for the performances, of course it is a standing ovation, there are shouts of the crowd, laughter, for me this is the best praise. I like it when people react vividly, when people laugh, it's very cool.
- Well, yes, I agree with you! Getting a charge of emotions, adrenaline is the best thing that can be for giving. What do you think is important for artists to achieve their goals? What advice would you give to aspiring artists?
Dmitry: here I will not be original, first of all you need to develop your own style. But it is often impossible to just give birth out of the blue. That is, this is a story just like the story of becoming a designer. This is always an oversight, that is, first of all, there must be a large layer of understanding of what is happening, the study of other authors, and against the background of this, experiments begin. The beginning is very primitive, with copying some aspects, understanding them. And then it all adds up to a kind of alchemical formula, when a person somewhere notices how to work with light, somewhere with a form, somewhere with an idea. And then something of his own is born. Because in the early stages, both with me and with other authors, I often notice some kind of associative connection. That is, we look at the work and say: "so, and this has already happened", and say where it was copied from. And aerobatics, when they compare creativity with us.
As for the advice, this is primarily development. It is necessary to go to galleries, to exhibitions of contemporary art, not only in order to see and absorb the visual range there, but to get acquainted with gallery owners, get acquainted with the organizers, with participants, just with ordinary people. It happens to me that I can quite shamelessly approach a person and, if I like him to start some kind of dialogue, I will somehow get to know him there. All these things are very important because the world is moving forward just colossally, now with social networks. That is, the format of creativity that was 5 years ago is completely different from what it is now.
Now it is very important to exchange, enter into some kind of collaboration. If earlier the attitude was “I and only I move, do not share anything with anyone,” now this strategy will lead to creative extinction. Now it is very important to collaborate with the guys, to find new acquaintances. # Nbsp; This I would single out as the most important aspect - this is the development of your own style and of course there are absolutely no compromises with the circumstances.
As soon as you start doing some kind of creativity, it is always experiments. And experiments, in turn, are not traversed paths and there bumps begin to fall immediately on the head. This must be immediately accepted as a kind of rain that will pass over time and cannot be avoided.
- How do you feel about competitions? This can be useful, because this is a collaboration?
Dmitry: In fact, there have been a lot of competitions lately. As soon as the pandemic began, in my case all this intensified to somehow manifest itself somewhere. Of the last, where I participated, and later became a co-curator there, it was Art Desil in Miami.
At first I was a participant there. Then the guys remembered that I was a rather ambitious, active person and they called me to co-curators. Since I myself am a designer, I took over all applied things, posters, leaflets, websites. It was a kind of barter, I gave them my creative possession, and they gave some of the glory they received.
-Many are now interested in what the main trends of contemporary art are in trend. What can you highlight?
Dmitry: This is actually a very difficult question. Because after the strong development of social networks, there is a viewer for everything, so there is a demand for everything and there is a supply for everything.
I try to often visit exhibitions of different formats, I have something favorite, but sometimes I force myself to go and see. Even if I don't like it, it's still some kind of variety in the diet - what other people do.
Probably, I cannot single out something that prevails. Previously, the term "contemporary art" people imagined that something was so abstract, incomprehensible, but now it is defined for some other classes. Therefore, I would not be able to highlight something specific. I myself like things that are lighter, more positive, which somehow exalt a person, glorify his spirit. This cannot be called contemporary art, I like socialist realism. I myself am from the Urals, we had a pool there, where there was a huge fresco on the wall depicting a man and a woman in some kind of inspiring dynamic poses. And all this somehow causes more aesthetic delight in me than some kind of deformography. When, on the contrary, it shows that there a person is weak, twisted. These things never turned me on, I did not understand them.
In general, I believe that if the author does something, then he should be responsible for influencing the mass audience. After all, when it is gaining popularity, the question arises: "Was it worth it if everyone is now looking at it?"
We thank Dmitry for such a deep and meaningful dialogue. We are sure that everyone will find here something of their own and for themselves.
For our part, we cannot fail to notice the simple and well-known truth "A talented person is talented in everything." The main thing is to develop and not stand still, try something new and discover new facets.
