St. Petersburg Art Fair "1703"

From June 14 to 18, MYTH Gallery participated in the second edition of St. Peterburg Art Fair "1703". 

For the first time, we decided to participate in the fair with Vadim Mikhailov's solo stand. At the beginning of this year, at the Museum of contemporary art PERMM (Perm), the artist's personal exhibition "It's reverse" ended. Since not everyone had the opportunity to visit the exhibition, we decided to recreate part of the exposition on the stand, which explains the color decision of the stand.

Vadim Mikhailov's large-scale (fifteen-meter) work "The Big Exodus" combines several layers of the artist's mythology at once. Here you can meet the characters of Old Believer splints, brutalized plants, fantasy animals and household items. These "heroes" of ancient and modern Russian culture are trying to change this culture in themselves.

Seraphim, horsemen, dragons and other evil spirits move in a string in an endless procession. This panorama of mythical and biblical characters refers to Christian texts, reminding of the great exodus from paradise lands and, at the same time, of the eternal movement of man in search of a better life – of attempts to escape from something or to find what is lost. The host of heroes resists unification and does not allow themselves to be united by a common goal. What motivates the clawed plants and the seraphim who lost one wing? What does the bird announce and what kind of scroll is in the hands of a figure with a staff?

The basis for Vadim's works are usually outdated objects and things – clothes, tabletops, boxes, carpets. Above the gesso and black oil, the artist scratches the drawing, showing it on the surface. The image is implanted with its carrier, the plots are intertwined, forming an intricate world of the artist's fantasies. According to the curator Lizaveta Matveeva, the author's view is directed at an alternative parallel world, as if manifested with the help of X-ray vision. The figures in his works seem to be turned inside out and presented to us in the form of their own alter egos who have made their way into our world.

Photo: Elik Iafarov