Today in the Engineering building of the State Tretyakov Gallery opens exhibition of works by Eugene Izmailov. The exhibition displays over 80 works of different years

Today, 11 November, in the Engineering building of the State Tretyakov Gallery (Lavroushinsky Lane, 12, 3rd floor) opens an exhibition of works Eugene Izmailov . The exhibition displays over 80 works of different years.

name Eugene Askerovicha Izmailov (b. 1939) - painter, graphic, etcher - is associated with the period of Soviet unofficial art of the 1970's. Member of the famous exhibition at VDNH (1975), one of the exhibitors of the exhibition project "Other Art" (1990-1991), from 1990, he worked a lot in Europe - Germany, Britain and France. Recently Izmailov experimenting in different genres of decorative art - a wooden relief, stained glass, creates three-dimensional objects.

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Galina Elshevskaya of creativity of the author: «Creativity Eugene Izmailov is to us today after a long break. Not only the times have changed, but the space: Izmailov long lived in Germany, and, therefore, in the domestic art of life attended indirectly, as a guest. But the German culture, he is not here ...

.... Symptoms save themselves - alive and active - to change the cultural field with a zero audibility is expressed in a number of works from the early, Russian, later to European, and, if more widely - in this line expressed a certain model of survival of the Romantic consciousness in its complete lack of demand .

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What is consciousness initially romantic - definitely. In pictures Izmaylova 1970 be read a full cross-section of the intelligentsia then perception of the world: homelessness, lost souls, proud mythology "people of the air enthralled by far - a retrospective and a pipe - beauty. I remember in the days when a few of these works appeared in the underground exhibitions, their vocabulary did not cause problems, and bizarre phantasmagoria, metaphors, flights, cruises and rallies, and Bosch-breygelevskie reminiscences - all invested in the history of romantic rejection of reality and romantic irony about any stable datum. So heed was primarily a literary layer - and the quality of the chamber paintings, archaic, and the warm glow of colors also consistent with the poetics of "other" vymechtanny world, all facing in the past or in the non-existent.

Now, as time passes and seemed to be in the reverse perspective of the present, in these early things you notice something else - the attention to the material, taste to art as to produce beautiful, quality, and certainly complicated things. It is no accident Izmailov always preferred the pure oil tempera, gouache and mixed technique: just a colorful layer of oil can find "romantic" depth, corresponding to possible copyright depths of the world - while the tempera and gouache on fixed surface, were almost a miniature "cutting." Applicative superimposed on each other, "sticky" silhouettes and shapes form a fantastic line-colorful arabesque quite decorative in its nature, the spatial compactness plexus, responding as metaphysically existent constraint, and simultaneously turns multifigure slozhnosochinenny story in calligraphy ligature. Picture box every now and then centered a composite likeness of the cartouche, or shingles, garlands, subjects are often combined in one space - kind of stamps around the muntins, and besides, in itself Chamberness canvases in this light that looks like a penchant for exquisite handicrafts. Often Izmailov imprinting images in homemade frames from the substrate antique mirrors or table tops a mahogany is, of course, a special sign of poverty in those years when the rickety antiques had been taken to throw in the trash - but at the same time in an effort to bring the process of doing things to the functional-logical finale is contained attempt to totally distribute scenic beauty, make it a necessary accessory of everyday life. And it is this need - in essence, design - comes to the fore in his current work.

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are difficult to name the pictures in the usual sense of the word. Paintings, of course, but not quite easel - Canvas triangular, polygonal. Trapezoidal, composite polyptych of fragments, linkable to the rules of the game, mosaics, collages, and spatial arrangement in a patchwork of quaint wooden frame. And still hanging objects, bottles in the cartoon case and also painted cubes. Thus the principle of drawing and even the favorite motifs remain the same.

bird, fish, a female figure ... not completely lost its semantic-symbolic functions, these elements are fine series like now to address a certain implicit or recall integrity - the "golden age" in which all the meanings of things there inside the picture and were fused logic picture of the world. This logic is naturally broken up, and the new situation figurative fragments, sporadically vyplyvaya of confusion of abstract layers, looking for their place in the decor.

Including fragments of sacred subjects. Collage toys - Holy Family on a donkey, a fisherman - or Jesus Christ - with a white dove on her breast and fish in the legs. Trigonal ornamental fish scales gleaming patches of gold foil, mask-faces marked with a card suit; scraps of stigmata on his palms flat wooden idol does not mean more than his bandaged finger. The canonical picture of the situation in a new decorative whole is in itself only ironically reinterpreted overtones - but this whole idea of a celebration of the formal and colorful abundance. Capriciously growing image, like bindweed or infinite repeat, getting fooled any surface, leaving unfilled gaps, graphics and painting, wood carving and tissue application, pop-art labels, and a snippet interrupt each other within one and the same thing. Self-development forms so totally, as it is spontaneous unpredictable. Life itself as it lost the structure, particularly rigidly defined boundaries of the picture frame.

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therefore may play a double frame, or assembly-folding picture, pictures, crosses, paintings, carousel: disparate parts of the universe can be pieced together only mechanically, with obvious seams at the joints. In fact, in such kunshtyukah many serious: Eugene Izmailov knows what form - is significant that, for example, triangular blade, even if repeats some wandering romantic theme, there will be no window to the world - either to an external or the internal, individual artist's world. And access to the object means to him is not personal dissatisfaction with the usual kind of statements, but only a willingness to conform to the changed nature of things.

Now it works with the surface, with the strata of layers - with a patchwork, mosaic, multi-level whole object. But these objects are unlikely to "objective", because the romantic consciousness, which found them in unexpected way of life is alien to any structuring and can not tolerate power system or the law. The result of the artistic efforts every time a matter of taste, inspiration and random luck. However, for this work are found masterovitostyu underlying ontological grounds: in the expansion of "beauty" in an effort to cover the image of the surface of all the "things of the world" reads a dream to keep the "memory of the genre" in a situation of progressive entropy. Pop-up fragments of a narrative-visual text to address the image of the text in the fullness - or the image of time in which such a complete text was possible and natural.

This is the time - in the past, and its clue can not be restored except by a dotted line, in the mode of atrial fibrillation. In this mode, Eugene Izmailov found a way to preserve the integrity of attitude - that not all his contemporaries have ».

The exhibition is open to the public from 12 to 29 November 2009.

Source: press release of the State Tretyakov Gallery