Archangel Michael and Black Square: Re:Renaissance exhibition opens

Artist Yegor Ostrov urged to return to the Renaissance and stop playing rebels

“Our hearts demand a renaissance! Now or never! We can no longer look into the Black Square, hoping to find some ray of light there, ”says the artist Yegor Ostrov and presents the viewer with an alternative. The exhibition “Re:Renaissance” is a manifesto of a native of St. Petersburg, now living in Moscow, which has been in preparation for 30 years.

The exposition, presented in the halls of ROSIZO in Petroverigsky Lane, included about 50 works. On them, the familiar scenes of Raphael, Guido Reni, Michelangelo come to life with the help of the author’s technique, built on optical effects. The central canvas is where the Archangel Michael smashes the Black Square with his spear.

Classical images in the paintings of Yegor Ostrov are mobile. We see the Madonna and David as if through a dull glass, which is either clouded or cleared. This effect is achieved with the help of a special author’s technology – computer rasters. Images with an optical illusion are dotted with thin lines – sometimes winding, somewhere expanding, and somewhere narrowing, or straight, superimposed on the plot with a fine grid. This technique is similar to the experiments of op-art in the second half of the 20th century, but Yegor Ostrov recalls that engravers of the past also used similar techniques. These optics are part of his mission statement. The artist believes that it is necessary to return to the imagery of the Renaissance, abandoning the sign system proposed by the avant-garde artists at the beginning of the twentieth century.

“We must turn off this road, because it will lead us to chaos and destruction,” Yegor Ostrov says to an MK correspondent. — To put an end to one of the areas of art that has occupied the entire territory and dictates its discourse to us. This is not our discourse, our fine art has been stolen from us. We must return the beautiful image. Drop the “Black Square” from the ship of history. We did not start the war against modernism, but we are ending it.

The key hall of the exhibition is dedicated to just this motif: the heavenly warrior Archangel Michael plunges his spear into the iconic image of Kazimir Malevich, which once marked the beginning of a new era in art. Before us is a whole series of works, where the favorite heroes of the Renaissance masters enter the battle with the Suprematist figures from the paintings of the avant-garde artist. The island calls on Raphael and Guido Reni, Michelangelo and Pontormo, Apollo and Saint Sebastian to rebuild the Renaissance and revive the Renaissance. Metamodern with its request for a new sincerity is, according to the artist, a confirmation that humanity is tired of abstraction.

The twentieth century, which began with the rejection of imagery, has become a battlefield of fascism and communism, globalism and nationalism, liberalism and conservatism. Now the future is foggy, and modernity has exhausted itself, so it’s time to return to the classical ideas of beauty and humanism. But not with the help of imitation and copying, but with the use of the latest technologies, and then eternity will open before you, the artist is sure. In other – not so militant – halls, he invites the viewer to take a look at such imagery: admire the Madonnas and the naked bodies of ancient gods and athletes. “Ethernaism” – that is, the art of the Eternal – such a new term is introduced by the curator of the exhibition, Vasily Uspensky, in relation to the works of Ostrov.

– Egor’s statement may seem radical, but he is not the only one thinking in this direction. Different voices say that you need to reconcile the classics and modernity, stop playing rebels. And Yegor’s voice in this choir is strong and distinct,” Vasily Uspensky, an art critic, curator of the Hermitage collection of engravings, a researcher of the culture and traditions of past centuries, is sure.

The program exhibition of Yegor Ostrov leaves an ambiguous impression. On the one hand, in the halls (there are five in total) soothing music, a church choir sound, and the optical effects themselves in the paintings, created using digital techniques and painstaking manual labor, tune in to thoughtfulness and contemplation. On the other hand, the militant message and call of the artist to smash the “Black Square” with a spear in some ways make him related to the founding father of the theory of non-objective art and the founder of the “Affirmative New Art” (UNOVIS) movement Kazimir Malevich. Get rid of the old to build your own. Somewhere we have already heard it. Obviously forever.