At the age of twelve, I had my first strong impression – first love. The emotions were so strong that I needed to paint colour spots. And this happened whenever there was a strong emotion. So, I needed to recreate the colour and this inner experience because I have never seen anything like this in a physical world. I realized that I needed to find an explanation and a solution, a physical embodiment of these impressions. I worked in a classical technique in Moscow, tried printing and abstraction in Sao Paulo, looked for an answer in Chinese metaphysics and drawing in Shanghai, studied the theory of Art and practised sculpture in England. But on the flat surface of the painting, I lacked volume, and in sculpture, I was missing a pictorial colour.
During the lockdown period, I ran out of all creative materials. So I started collecting newspapers from neighbours and was working with this medium. I dipped a sheet of paper directly into the paint. It softened and turned into pure colour. I got a medium with which I could create a pictorial colour volume. And then I understood. The problem was that I saw (felt) events through volumetric colour and in time-space. This colour is not flat as in the paintings and not three-dimensional as in sculptures. This is a vibrating colour field, in which I physically feel the time through the distance between the beginning of the colour and its depth. I get stuck in the gaps of colour, breathe through colour, I change with this pictorial event, as this colour field alters with the change of light.
“Homeland” (Родина ‘Rodina’ in Russian) is the place where I was born and raised. My parents and sister live there, whom I have not seen for a year and a half because of the pandemic. I didn't hug my mother. I did not feel the beating of her heart and her light red, warm colour.
The presented work is about Moscow. This triptych (a reference to the Russian icons) is my physical experience of the place. It is a complex and rich colour that combines the experience of the past and the breath of today. So a person passing by can plunge into this pulsating red and become a part of it. This is the possibility to perceive something through a complex experience of colour, space and time.
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