Vladimir Shinkarev. "Gloomy Pictures"

The Erarta Museum presents the ascetic landscapes of Vladimir Shinkarev, free from the advertising joy of being.

Vladimir Shinkarev is a legendary personality, artist and writer, founder and ideologist of the Mitki art group. His authorship also belongs to the book of the same name, which contains, among other things, words and expressions characteristic of the participants in the movement (for example, "Duc", "Ely-Pali", "Mitki do not want to defeat anyone"), as well as the "End Mitkov ". In 2008, Shinkarev decided to become a separate, free artist. The kind carnival-fake Mitkovo banter was replaced by the ascetic contemplative painting of a gloomy contemplator. For him, painting is an absolutely self-sufficient occupation that does not tolerate fuss, and perhaps that is why the author does not tend to exhibit frequently, to occupy as much artistic space as possible.

The title of the exhibition "Gloomy Pictures" conceals the need for refutation: indeed, these are not gloomy, but rather quiet, pensive, grayish-flooded landscapes of ordinary St. Petersburg, familiar to most of us. The exhibition does not have an invented concept, it does not bear the character of a project - the exposition contains works of recent years, freed from the enhancers of color and taste, from the advertising joy of being. These are pictures of the real world, a city with a characteristic St. Petersburg gloom and a wavering, almost metaphysical light, united by the intonation of an indirect statement. Each of them is the sum of the artist's life experience and knowledge about the world.

The restrained color characteristic of Shinkarev's works is, according to the author, the color of the flag of modern resistance. In the simplest plots, he manages to catch something timeless, chthonic, mysterious, which turns his painting into an almost esoteric practice. Transferring the viewer somewhere, for example, near Sestroretsk, to Tarkhovka, where “a meager ray of cold measure sows light in a damp forest”, where “I slowly carry sorrow like a gray bird in my heart”, it helps to disconnect “from the matrix” of the brilliant the world.