“There are references to socialist realism and even earlier constructivism” – Kommersant FM

Kommersant FM columnist Dmitry Butkevich talks about the exhibition “Arteries of the City” in the Artstory gallery.

The Artstory gallery is hosting an exhibition of the artist Sergei Kazakov-Podkin “Arteries of the City” until January 7. The subjects are mostly urban-industrial; they are especially close to the artist, and more recently to this gallery.

My particular attention was drawn to the old planes, which were beautifully painted. He found these cars in the aviation museum in Ulyanovsk. The artist is generally interested in old Soviet aviation, frozen artifacts that will never fly anywhere again. By the way, this is a very popular topic among collectors, as it turns out.

Industrial landscapes, views of the Kama River, on the banks of which Perm, the hometown of Kazakov-Podkin, is located. There are a lot of winter works, which is quite natural for a person who grew up in the Urals, where the winters are colder and even snowier: a frozen river, workers on snow-covered roads, cars stuck in snowdrifts. There are no faces in his paintings. The artist perceives the city both as a living organism with its arteries and as a huge mechanism.

Sergei Kazakov-Podkin said that he always takes photographs first, and then transfers the story to canvas. But he is not at all close to the works of photo- and hyperrealists with their large formats and detail. Rather, there are references to socialist realism and even earlier constructivism.

Sergei admires how artists of the 20th century, for example, Alexander Labas, Alexander Deineka, Georgy Nissky, were able to show industrial beauty and power, because “a huge cool world was created, it was a very good time, industrial. Many discoveries, inventions, new technologies. Now all this is fading into oblivion, rusting, collapsing. You look at it and feel sad.”

The current exhibition will be slightly modified. Artstory Gallery will hold a New Year’s Artstory market for the first time from December 19 to January 7. She will also present the works of her regular artists and several new names from December 15 to 17 at the new contemporary art fair Catalog, organized by the Association of Galleries in an unusual place that almost no one has ever been to – in the historical building of Ivan Sytin’s printing house on Pyatnitskaya street, 71.