Alexander Kabin. Affiliation Automatic translate

Erarta Museum presents an exhibition of Alexander Kabin, whose paintings express a poignant feeling of belonging to the North, to their family and the history of the country.

A few years ago, Alexander Kabin and his family moved from Severodvinsk to a village near Yaroslavl. Although northern asceticism has always been the core of Kabin’s work, the artist admits that only after moving he was able to feel like a truly northern person, he began to feel more keenly his belonging to the northern nature, the places where he was born and formed (hence the name of the exhibition). Moving from the geographical outskirts to the center gave a new impetus to creativity. The artist himself says that now his painting is based less on reality, but more on memory effects.

Engineering education helped Alexander Kabin to design and build a house near Yaroslavl - original, like the author’s painting, it differs from the traditional red-brick neighbors with its pensive gray color. And if earlier from the window of the workshop one could see a typical multi-storey courtyard, which you can see in the work “December 1”, now there is a lot of sky and a field overgrown with hogweed. But in the workshop, as before, there are Soviet photo albums that tell about the life of ordinary citizens, telling the stories of their families and native places. Frames and fragments of these dissimilar destinies Alexander Kabin snatches out of oblivion and captures on canvas - traditional Soviet group photographs are guessed in his works.

Alexander Kabin says: “The artist is part of the historical layer, part of the general process. From the works of the artist, you can always get an impression of the period when they were created. One of the artist’s missions is to be a chronicler of his time. I’m trying to cover the slice of time I’m in." Kabin seeks to formulate the archetype of Russian life, which, despite the development of civilization, remains the same. The artist combines spatial and temporal coordinates in such a way as to obtain a recognizable and at the same time eternal image with a clear geographical reference.

This is the third personal exhibition of Alexander Kabin at the Erarta Museum. You can also see the author’s works in the museum’s permanent exhibition.