Vadim Mikhailov. It's reverse

"It's reverse" is the project that we've been preparing for a few months and have been waiting for.

Today the first museum exhibition of Vadim Mikhailov opens in the Museum of contemporary art PERMM. Our friend and curator Lizaveta Matveeva created the concept of the inside-out world that gets into ours through the works of Vadim (referring to the "Stranger Things" series). The project includes objects created over the past three years, both new and from private collections. Exhibition is built in the form of a gloomy maze, where you choose your own route and hence the sequence of meetings with entities.

 

It's reverse

Vadim Mikhailov's solo exhibition in Perm is an important event not only for the artist himself, but also for the local art environment. Born in Gornozavodsk, Perm Krai, Vadim moved to Perm at the age of 17 and spent a significant part of his life-time here. It was a period of searching and shaping himself. Vadim got into the underground crowd, including the legendary workshops at Kislovodskaya 17, met like-minded people, some of whom became guides to the art world for him. In addition, Mikhailov studied in the studio of Perm artist Mikhail Pavlyukevich, as well as at ART POLITICS School of Contemporary Art curated by Arseny Sergeev.

Later, Vadim moved to St. Petersburg, where a new difficult but productive period began for him. A major role in the development of Mikhailov's artistic practice was played by the local group North-7. This group unites friends and colleagues regardless of age, art experience and the specifics of their work. Artists organize independent spaces and projects. They participate in different institutionalized events in St. Petersburg and outside. Any artist needs constant exchange with others. So, communication with Sever-7 has become an important phase for Vadim. In addition, thanks to this group, Vadim has the opportunity to regularly show his work in public.

But Mikhailov's style and method crystallized in Perm. His works are made in the sgraffito technique. The artist applies paint primer and black oil paint to the objects, and then scratches the drawing with a blade or awl. This approach refers to the familiar "folk" graffiti — scratched drawings and inscriptions in front entrances. As a basis, he uses everything that comes to hand: old clothes, pieces of furniture or even houses, toys, carpets and so on. Many of these items are personalized because they originally belonged to artist friends, whose names are sometimes recorded in the titles of works. Some items are imprinted in the collective memory, such as the velvet rugs that hung on the walls in almost every Soviet and post-Soviet apartment.

The scratched drawings are extremely simple in plot. Vadim often depicts the objective world with a sarcastic or even grotesque displacement: infinitely long nails, sewn stuffed hares or a head sleeping on bones. In addition to the world of things, the artist has recently been reproducing a fantasy world teeming with a variety of characters from myths, fairy tales, children's books about the Jurassic period, the Bible and cartoons — they intertwine, merge, are expelled from Paradise and soar in the black void.

The exhibition in PERMM museum presents works completed over the past 3 years, from 2019 to 2022. They are united not only by the technique described above, but also by where the artist's attentive and inquisitive gaze is directed — an alternative parallel world appeared with the help of X-ray vision, released and shown to the viewer.

Skeletons of animals, mythological creatures, biblical heroes and many other characters and their parts seem to be turned inside out. Their alternative essences, alter egos are "scratched" and make their way into our world through Vadim's works, which become a special portal. The visitor of the exhibition finds himself in a gloomy maze with forks. Here everyone has the right to choose their own route, as well as the order of meetings with the entities inhabiting Mikhailov's inside-out world.

The artist shows our eye an alternative dimension of reality, a different universe, which could be called the "Inside-Out", referring to the popular TV series "Stranger Things". This "Inside-Out" hides behind the usual objects of everyday life: a human skeleton or garters for stockings are hidden under a suit or pantaloons, a bucket is in a drawer, a pheasant lurks in the window, and an atomic explosion is hidden behind a tree in a peaceful landscape on a wall carpet. Mikhailov draws the viewer's attention to objects and scenes, again and again clearly showing that everything we look at is actually different: "everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it" (Confucius).

Despite the fact that the inside-out world shown by Vadim is devoid of color and filled with dark plots and sinister characters, there is a place for black humor. The joke can be encoded both in the image itself and in short phrases, like tags: "Cramped", Nevermore, "Moscow-cito" (wordplay: in Russian, the word sieve (сито) is consonant with the city (сити), "Prevailed" or "Unbearable". In his works, the artist builds a fabulous narrative, but the fairy tale here has nothing in common with the adapted "toothless" folklore that we read in childhood. In Vadim's works is no hope for a happy end, but there is no end itself. The world is presented here in all its angularity and ungainliness, and the sinister, bearing the guise of absurdity, turns out to be unarmed and helpless in front of an involuntarily escaping laugh. Black humor once again becomes a shield in the face of our visualized fears — it saves and finally frees us from them.

Lizaveta Matveeva

Photo: Museum of cotemporary art PERMM