Vadim Mikhailov. Whirlpool
05.07.2024 – 18.08.2024
Curator: Peter Belyi
Vadim Mikhailov's work is similar to the refraction of sound under water. The exhibition offers to immerse yourself in the semi-mysterious Russian twilight world. Peter Belyi notes that "Vadim Mikhailov's original mystical philosophy has been turned into a sinister theater stuck in gesso and black oil. Frozen heroes raise their hands to the sky with stretching viscous threads that tenaciously pull back into the swamp." Vadim's works resemble archaeological artifacts. He finds inspiration for their creation in folklore images.
Every artist has their own time, their own hour. Raging black is ideal for Vadim Mikhailov. Cemetery kitsch, icon painting, the risen ghost of the Soviet, something inexorably Russian, a distorted world — it has everything. The ingrained visual philosophy which originated in Perm has not gone anywhere — the Permian Komi, the Zyryans, inhabitants of the territory between the factory and the forest, a special breed and a special nature which does not let the urban go, thrusting its knotted roots through the torturous layers of history: repressions, camps, voucher privatization, and perestroika. Brutalism is inherent to Mikhailov's works, with the bitterness of the destroyed makeshift cosmic interface, feelings breaking through the asphalt, the maelstrom, the energy of his own vision, as if superimposed on the now familiar OBERIU culture of verbal absurdity.
Russian art after Black Square was nullified, and along with many other forms of nullification, the color black itself was reset. This liberation of color, going beyond the surface, makes artist Vadim Mikhailov like a miner working in a quarry. He frantically digs for his coal devils. The inscriptions glowing in black, like miner's teeth, utter short rough words, a roar which seems to come from the belly of the earth. The Russian element proceeds from cosmism to cosmos, and necrorealism, like the primary formula of being, dissolves in the air. The world of objects, like mini-plays like the lives of saints depicted on icons, acquire the macabre features of modernity – the Bat signal, a medal, chains, rats, childhood fears. Iconography is substituted in the Soviet consciousness by a rug with a reindeer. Money is both tragedy and symbol, reflecting suffering, privatization, national bankruptcy, and the worthlessness of life—notches on bills, and a document. The complete absence of melancholy is replaced by a macabre show, harsh, crooked graphics, and swearing through the teeth. The Permian dialect of a print setter, a digger, a cabinetmaker, a circus hand, a photographer — all of the author's life experience is calculated, weighed, divided. There is a sense of catastrophe, of Belshazzar’s feast, of the end, if not of the world, then of the era, as the horsemen of the Apocalypse, blowing pioneers’ horns, gallop through the darkness of the present.
Petr Belyi
Photo: Ivan Sorokin