...A gantry crane is 15 m high, 16 wide, 20 m long. In a cab, inside this monster, sits a sturdy, but vulnerable and occasionally emotional Woman. She unloads wagon loads of metal coming in from numerous warehouses; and she manages a 12-ton crane. The Crane Woman is a Goddess, sitting high above in the azure sky, above the tree tops and everything else around her. She is looking at the world from above. What does she see? She sees departments, warehouses, shop floors, garages, and cars on the surface of the earth. She knows that these buildings have rooms and corridors, doors and windows, that they host institutions and offices. It all is far away, down there. She has to move the crane, to shout at the sluggish workers, to lift and lower, and drive the crane back to the rail cars. Above the roofs of the buildings, where the first clouds appear, Lyuba’s mind becomes occupied with images troubling her. Items she will fill her «Food basket» with, the unwashed dishes she will wash and put on the «Drying Rack» while cooking dinner. But when she stops looking down and looks up, she thinks about happiness...
The crane did not fit in the museum space. What is left in the display is the world surrounding Lyuba, the Crane Woman, and the shadow cast by the crane.

Anya Zholud

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«Exhibition Continues» project at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art will feature a range of familiar works by Anya Zholud within one artistic and physical space. The starting point of the exhibition is the image of a gantry crane, casting a giant shadow over the walls of a 4-storey museum building. Around this axis, the works reflecting the artist’s interest in global themes will gravitate: «The Scheme of Elementary Happiness Space», «Cultural Institutions», «Paintings and Sculptures», «Emptiness»...

The art of Any Zholud revolves around emptiness, absence, and understatement — these notions will become the key subjects in this exhibition. In the «Exhibition Continues» the emptiness becomes ubiquitous; it fills almost the entire museum space. This motif can be traced in every element of the exhibition display — from empty frames, inviting the viewer to «complete» them with paintings, to the large like-named installation, in which all contours, usually lined with metal, are erased.

The show at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art is the final part of the «Exhibition Plan» project which started with the «House Plants» exhibition at Aidan gallery and was then followed by the «Hummer» show at Maria Gisich Gallery. All parts of this project are interrelated, and exist within a common artistic field. They are devoted to the correlation between the immensity of this field, and the limitations imposed by museum and gallery formats.

«Exhibition Continues» is a conventional museum directional sign. On the one hand, it reflects the use of clichéd expressions much favoured by Anya Zholud; on the other hand, it constitutes an important exhibition vector: paradoxically, the exhibition finishes with a continuation.

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Anya Zholud is a young but established artist. She was born in Saint Petersburg in 1981. Anya graduated from N. K. Rerikh Saint Petersburg Art College and Baron Stiglitz Saint Petersburg State Academy for Fine Arts and Crafts. She is also a graduate of the «Free Studios» School of Contemporary Art of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art.

Metal rods are the signature material Anya Zholud uses to create her unique sculptures and installations.
Anya Zholud has had over ten solo shows, and has participated in many group shows in Russia (Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Nizhniy Novgorod, Krasnoyarsk, Vologda) and abroad. Anya Zholud was among the participants the 53rd International Art Exhibition at the 2009 Venice Biennale, the world’s most important forum for contemporary art. Anya Zholud was nominated for the most prestigious Russian contemporary art awards, including the 2007 «Innovation» Award and the 2008 Kandisky Prize.

Works by Anya Zholud are held in the collections of the State Hermitage Museum (Saint Petersburg), the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the ART4.RU Contemporary Art Museum, Multimedia Art Museum (Moscow), The Museum of Non-Conformist Art (Saint Petersburg).