Exhibition

Theodor Bastard "White: Catching Evil Beasts"

Place

Gallery Erarta

29th line of Vasilievsky Island., 2

Category

Exhibition

Date

28 november 2018, 10:00 — 11 february 2019, 22:00

Price

от 500 rub

Events / Exhibition

At the exhibition in the Erarta Museum, Alexander Starostin, well-known to experimental music fans under the name of Fedor Svoloch (Theodor Bastard), acts as a universal artist. The exhibition includes expressive paintings, written according to graphic sketches of a decade ago, created in difficult moments of a cold fever. These drawings were consonant with the experimental material of the album “White: Catching Evil Beasts” of Alexander Starostin’s musical band Theodor Bastard, becoming its integral part.

This disc is one of the first significant works in the field of national ethno-electronics. Theodor Bastard created a work with Russian-language texts and imagery of Russian folklore that was relevant for sound, surprising many admirers who had lost the tradition of the dark “sound”. This fundamental for the Russian ethno-scene work is devoted to a sound installation, which, in combination with images of paintings, creates an atmosphere of an ominous fairy tale.

In his graphic works, as well as in music, Theodor Bastard refers to the experience of human interaction with the elements, the root art, which helped to understand and accept the world. Mills inhabited by small-scale evil spirits, predatory animals, flowers filled with blood are images that are frightening, repressed into the depths of memory and have become obsolete by modern man. Increasingly, parents clap in indignation compilations of Russian fairy tales, not wanting to acquaint their children with subjects unthinkable for cruelty. At the same time, children who have not yet tasted all the fruits of culture are ideal addressees of archaic texts from the time of the “childhood of mankind”. They should not explain the nature of metaphors or the malicious motives of any swan geese. About this is the “Kukushka” video installation presented at the exhibition, the director's work of Theodor Bastard. The video was filmed in Karelia in the wild during a multi-day expedition. The concept of the video is simple: our contemporaries can also meet with a fairy tale, tired of consumption and not parting with the benefits of civilization in the lap of nature. Simply turn to the mythopoetic experience of their own childhood, when fantasy helped to know reality.