Moscow Museum of Modern Art presents «Climacus», a solo exhibition of Greek artist Martina Anagnostou. The author initiated this project about a year ago, her sources of inspiration being the eponymous text by monk John Climacus (c. 579-649) and the famous ancient icon from St. Catherine Monastery on Mount Sinai. Martina uses Christian Orthodox iconography to point at numerous global problems of today’s world — be them social or political. At the same time, this project is about art and how its process is structured. The core of this exhibition consists of 30 paintings each measuring 120×105 cm. The paintings will be exhibited unframed, and canvases will be hung right on the walls. These works are like pages from the book, while texts on them are taken from the titles of «Climacus» 30 chapters. Besides that, the display includes two video installations and several other pieces.

Martina Anagnostou on «Climacus» project:

The famous icon «Ladder of Divine Ascent» made as a result of the book is one that has always fascinated me. This icon type portrays a very surreal image with a captivating sense of space, movement and emotion. At the core of its subject matter, it seems to me visually, are polarities: saints vs. demons, up vs. down. These polarities are why I chose this image and this book. I am fascinated by forces of good and evil and how they influence the path of our lives. Each of the 30 paintings represents a part of the icon, if all the 30 paintings are put together they will reveal the icon, it is a kind a giant puzzle if you will.

One of the books core messages is apatheia or dispassion, this being the only way, according to the author, to reach divinity. It’s hard to be dispassionate however when you look at the world around us. In this, the Moscow metro and Russian popular culture have become for me symbols of a global phenomenon. Travelling daily in the Moscow metro is a very intense experience. What strikes one most is the apathy yet extreme intent with which people go about their daily business. Untouched by the increasingly polarized world around them, and eagerly soaking up any media ploy to keep them abject, men and women mesmerized by popular culture and the hypnotic hum drum of an ultra materialist existence, descend towards decadence. With a determined, aggressive step it seems to me they step towards their ultimate destruction, fully aware and yet not caring, apathetic. In one of the video installations there is footage of metro escalators combines with a 3×2 m painting of the Climacus icon.

In all this work, Russian contemporary popular culture is placed in the boxing ring with Orthodox spiritual thought (not dogma, nor missionary type religious messages), in an attempt to awaken the need to want to be aware, to be involved and above all to be active concerning global affairs. At the same time, the use of on the one hand video and on the other of painting is a similar commentary on the state of contemporary art which shuns any reference to spirituality and gloats much rather in sensationalism, irony and the ultimate shock effect, through grand scale multimedia creations.

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«Climacus», or «Ladder of Divine Ascent», or «Ladder of Paradise» (lat. Climax Paradisi) is the key text written by St. John Climacus
(c. 579-649), monk of St. Catherine Monastery on Mount Sinai. It is reproduced in vol. 88 of «Patrologia Graeca».