Swing for stumps

"… All Soviet art is formalism. I grew up in this environment, from the childhood I hear … What did they talk about? Composition, color, smear … Only the form was there, and instead of the essence — a ritual. And also formal. Not your own, but from the outside. But the ritual is very elaborated and somehow branched out. Including, trips to Sednev. To the House of Creativity.
We received permits in the off-season. Cold and terrible slush. But you go, because it should be like this. And in advance it is known, what for: to be inspired by nature. In the open air. Shortly — Sednev. In the morning they put everyone in an osprey in a bus and take them out for creation. In some birch grove. At the edge of the field, then, disembarks, and everyone creeps, looking for a motive. And they begin to express it. Here there is texture, there is some kind of effect — a glaze, contrast … Here it is, the charm of nature!
And then an artist, one of our oldest… Without complexes. Quite simple. Without venturing, so to say, into the forest, he directly places the sketchbook by the bus, looks in the field and sees what he is displaying. The background is so gently gray painted, above the horizon — a strip of greens. And with a brush — three pokes. And at the exhibition — the signature: «Stumps.(Sednev)».
And he, as it were, opened the stumpness of this formalism very deeply. It is because of the strength of their abilities. That’s it, the socialist realists brought up this viewer by themselves and now they are complaining. Who needs not art, but a well-made thing to fit in the interior and was with a claim. And it’s all about this. Works, texts … People and … This is the only thing that art could be made of now…"

Vasiliy Ryabchenko (1993)