Publications

Article of Alexander Borovsky in the catalogue of an art exhibition Serge Essaian, Paintings, sculptures, graphic works in Russian Museum of St-Petersburg, St Petersburg, Palace editions, 2002. 181p.

« A typified contemporary urbanistic environment: standardly functionalized, technological, sterile as a model - not a speck of dust. White panels - the walls of an apartment building, a simple rhythm of closed window apertures, a "habitation factory" in its modern execution, and only that. In this representation of the mode of standardization and modelization one subconsciously seeks some hoax. What has Essaian got up his sleeve this time? What is this, in fact - an architectural maquette? Perhaps. In this vestigial genre, with all its auxiliariness, there lives a childishly naive game of adult - that is, of real - life: how will it all be "in reality," how will the tenants make their home in it, what will they do, what will keep them going? » (...)

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Article of Xavier Fabre in the book Serge Essaian, Houses, views, humans, Paris, Fragments editions, 2006. 152 p.

« The recent sculptures of Serge ESSAIAN resemble strange houses, sorts of truncated buildings, models of constructions in relief, white walls pierced by empty windows, where a stray silhouette occasionally appears.
These are the same silhouettes, busts, gaunt faces one finds in his paintings, supported by angular bodies cut from living flesh. » (...)

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Article of Alexander Borovsky in the book Serge Essaian, Houses, views, humans, Paris, Fragments editions, 2006. 152 p.

« The descriptive language of modern art is somewhat impoverished, lacking a set of basic words - "project," for instance, is as if armless.
Essaian, too, calls what he is showing today a "project." We must introduce more precise clarifications. Most representatives of so-called "actual art" do indeed think projectively. That is, in projects. This is not a metaphor, it is a description of a certain intellectual procedure as a system of sequences: first the explication of a complex of ideas; then the search for an adequate visual form for translating these ideas externally. » (...)

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