It is amazing that we see trees and are no longer surprised by them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Taguchi's work is based on human destiny, memory and suffering, traumas of post-imperial consciousness, multi-layered and specific information noise in which we live, trying to preserve, if not human dignity, then at least the human dimension.

Taguchi creates works in series, and each of her exhibitions is a gesture, deliberate, staged, lived. She uses a variety of techniques and works with multiple themes, preferring black and white, but sometimes delicately introduces color into her compositions. Consciously limiting himself in color, the artist works a lot with lines and plasticity. Drawing portraits, Stalinist architecture or creating ornaments, she builds a kind of mythological space (“Large Portrait”, “Hugs”, “Second Soul”, “Family Album Pages”, “Lace and Vibrations”, etc.).

Taguchi has always been fascinated by the phenomenon of palimpsest (this is the name given to manuscripts found on used parchments). Taguchi's palimpsest is "as an image of the multi-layered life: you look at what the past shines through and what the future shines through." The base background can be an image on the schematic canvas or something decorative. Then a drawing is applied to the first layer, but if it becomes too realistic, then it is destructed, blurred: “I paint over everything with white paint. Something comes through this layer. And this “something” I begin to pull out, I begin to draw again, but not to outline the old one, but to draw lines a little nearby, creating a new optics. I don’t know what will happen in the end - every time it’s a struggle with the material.”

Particularly large-scale dramas sound in the series of paintings "Trees", presented at the exhibition "ARBOR: Life Form", painted on canvas with acrylic, charcoal and sanguine. Authentic, unusual, very energetic portraits of trees without a background in a metaphysical environment - no earth, no sky, trunks and branches, sometimes strongly reminiscent of the anatomy of the body with blood vessels and muscles, and joints.

“Trees are like a scattered army of veteran soldiers, designed to guard and protect us by breathing in carbon dioxide and breathing out oxygen,” says Taguchi. “Worn out by battles and a long journey, they screw into the hard, inhospitable urban land, not ashamed of their wounds and injuries.

The trees are like upside down people. They think, communicate with the help of roots, we see only a small part of them, the bulk is hidden in the earth, where a secret, and even mystical life takes place. The roots "think" and give signals to the upper part of the plant," the artist continues.

The trunks are the human body, and the roots are intertwined arms, legs, shins, knees, and sometimes our insides. Sometimes you can guess the back, tail, paws or eyes of a mysterious monster.

Trees, like no other, are hostages of their fate: they cannot change their place of life, and if they leave it, then forever - under the onslaught of a hurricane or under a merciless saw. Like old soldiers, they continue to save us by breathing in carbon dioxide and breathing out oxygen.”

About the artist:

Anna-Katya Taguti (Ekaterina Kozlova) was born in Riga, in the family of the artist Yakov Kozlov, a representative of the academic school of Russian painting. Her mother's cousin Yitzhak Ben-Zvi Shimshelevich was the second President of Israel. Anna graduated from Moscow State Academic Art Institute named after V.I. Surikov (workshop of monumental art by Claudia Tutevol, student of Alexander Deineka).

He has been a member of the Moscow Union of Artists since 1984.

Lives and works in Moscow.

Laureate of the American Art Awards 2018. I and II place in the category “Portrait of someone famous”.

The works are in the collections of the Museum of Jewish painters (New York, USA), the Franz Meserel Graphic Center (Belgium), Il Museo Internazionale della donna nell'arte - MIDA (Skontrone, Italy), the Museum of Moscow Artists (Moscow, Russia), Novosibirsk Art Museum (Novosibirsk, Russia), Norilsk Art Picture Gallery (Norilsk, Russia), Erarta Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia).