Artists wrote a “heavenly book”: black holes, an altar of clouds and soap mirages

At all times, people have sought answers to eternal questions by peering into the sky. They looked for perfection and meaning there, raised prayers to it and dedicated poems, shared troubles and admired beauty. The sky is the most multi-layered, mysterious and… hackneyed theme in art. Therefore, taking on this topic for two long-time friends, artists Dmitry Shorin and Andrey Dvin, was a test – a way to go beyond themselves, abandoning the usual techniques.

The project, presented in the Sistema gallery, ultimately included 9 diptychs, the left half of each of which was painted by Dvin, and the right half by Shorin. Each work is a complete plot, but asymmetrical. The story of the eternal turned out to be borderline.

Dmitry Shorin and Andrey Dvin have been friends for more than 35 years, but they work differently. Shorin writes realistic works in the style of a romantic “glossy”, in which, however, he detects subtle banter and a conceptual look. Dvin creates abstraction, on his canvases the colors flow and swirl into whirlwinds, turning into a pure mood. A year ago, friends came up with the idea of ​​making a joint project about the eternal, so that for both it would become a test, going beyond their own patterns and methods. The theme chosen was the vast one – the sky.

“The sky appeared by itself,” says Andrey. “It unites us all.” This is a very simple and very complex, huge concept, comprehensive and at the same time individual. Since childhood, we have all been looking for recognizable images in the clouds, archetypes that emerge from the subconscious.

There was an idea to make such images with “castles in the air”, to give the viewer “keys”, but we decided that this was too simple. I wanted mystification, freedom. That’s why in the paintings there are windmills, soap bubbles, and an eclipse that resembles a black hole. The sky is a substance that allows you to look at obvious things from a different angle.

“Only the lazy didn’t draw the sky,” continues Dmitry. – But we came up with the idea of ​​writing symmetrical clouds, which are not the same, like everything else in this world; in nature, there is no ideal symmetry. No one has done this before us. Our works have a solid composition and a single color, although they are different in texture and writing. We are all dependent on the sky, this codependency gives rise to crazy illusions and fantasies. Of course, there is a lot of literature here, we did not try to avoid it, we even aggravated it.

The exhibition is, indeed, literary and borderline – on the brink of the abstract and the real, the meaningful and the incomprehensible. In a darkened room, works painted in half by two artists look like windows into another world, so similar to ours. Thanks to good lighting, it seems that the canvases are the source of light. Before us is the sky – from dawn to sunset. The first diptych, depicting early morning, resembles an altar. Probably a small paired work with massive clouds hanging over the sea, below – a large-scale one, with white “castles in the air” soaring over the mountains. They have the pathos characteristic of religious painting of the Renaissance, there is a magnificent decorativeness. Maybe this is a screen behind which God himself?

Opposite it is a clear sky with rare “feathers”, cut by the tower of the Lakhta Center, in which slight irony and grotesqueness can already be read. Next is the daytime sky, in the center of each half of the diptych there is a cloud, in which you just want to look for archetypes of imaginary and real creatures.

Another double cloud is moving straight towards you and seems about to knock you down or pass through you. The other sky is stormy, crying, and at the same time a little hooligan. Another one hangs over the windmills, and it turns out that the inexorable movement here is created from the whim of the fickle wind.

The next sky is on the verge of fantasy: the halves reflect a soft abyss turning pink in the sunset rays, where there are “breakthroughs” from a solar eclipse. Black circles resemble holes—to nowhere. The night sky is visible in the final diptych – in a break in the clouds. If you look at each half separately, the opening resembles an eye; together they resemble the silhouette of an angel.

Each half of the diptych is a mirror reflecting its “double”. But no matter how connected the authors are, each writes in their own way: Dvin is more impetuous and expressive, Shorin is softer and more colorful. Two people – two characters – two views. In life, too, people are united – by symmetrical feelings, views, faith, impulse, but they are not identical. Likewise, here the pages of the heavenly book are not symmetrical.

“The project was conceived in February and has since undergone some changes, but the essence remains the same: to show the sky – from dawn to sunset – through the eyes of two authors who worked together on the same composition, each in their own way,” says exhibition curator Nadya Oktyabr . “At first we wanted to hang the works so that they flowed into one another, so that the sky ran like a belt line, the cloudy spaces passed into each other. But in the end we expose them as some kind of windows.

The somewhat mannerist lyricism of the sky is justified, because this grandeur makes you wonder: what is behind this beauty, perhaps a chilling emptiness? Clouds are essentially air.

It is no coincidence that the central work was a diptych with soap bubbles floating against the backdrop of picturesque clouds. We can build castles in the air and ideas in our imagination as much as we want. These thoughts may seem very significant. And then in an instant they will burst and disappear, as if they never existed.

This happens in life too – apparent stability collapses in an instant, wealth is replaced by poverty (and vice versa), fame is replaced by oblivion. And yet dreams are the very air in which there is no support and which is necessary to breathe and live.

Leonardo da Vinci wrote in The Book of Painting: “Let it not seem burdensome to you to stop sometimes to look at the spots on the wall, or at the ashes of the fire, or at the clouds, or at the dirt, or at other similar places in which, if you examine them carefully, you will find the most amazing images, which will become the cause of your fame, since obscure objects stimulate the mind to new inventions.”

Contemplation of clouds is not a whim, but a necessity, which allows you to switch from the momentary to the eternal in order to objectively assess reality.