Art has an air of the stubborn, an ability to stay in place or keep on track. And artists have the option of assuming a personal position of carving out their own path. Some artists do. But how do they go about this now, when most people have chosen to be vacillators rather than anything else? This is the central issue in ‘Inertia’, the Russian-Dutch diptych with exhibitions and symposia in St. Petersburg (2006) and Amsterdam (2008).

 

Breaking free of belief in progress to pursue an alternative, unorthodox way of life, is a familiar Russian theme. By intentionally ‘sitting with arms folded’, the former civil servant in Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground (1864) aims to lay the foundations for breaking free; he calls it ‘inertia’.

 

In a similar way, in the 1990s, a number of Russian artists sought alternatives to the hyperactive avant-gardism that had art in a stranglehold after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Avant-gardism has calmed down and now, even in Russia, the business of art is booming, too. But these artists are still edgy, still alert.

What is clearly emerging in Russia is also evident – in a different way - among a number of artists in Holland. These artists are also seeking ways of shaping their lives and art without their work responding to change or current situations. Fruitful inertia. The project attempts to explore this standpoint, and have a hand in shaping it.

 

Erik Hagoort