Vladimir Molochkov "Inconvenient things" Automatic translate

April 4, 2017 at 18.00 in the Museum and Exhibition Complex of the Russian Academy of Arts Zurab Tsereteli Gallery of Arts (Moscow, Prechistenka 19), the exhibition of works by Honorary Member of the Russian Academy of Arts Vladimir Molochkov “Inconvenient Things” will open.

Curator of the exhibition - Andrey Erofeev

The birth of a new artist is an important event not only for people of art, but also for society as a whole, because contemporaries gain a fresh look at themselves, their mentality, feelings and the meaning of the reality surrounding them. Vladimir Molochkov entered Russian art just yesterday. According to traditional terminology, he is a still life painter. Draws the world of household things. But his attention does not concern items from supermarkets, but those things that we inherited from the Soviet era. Many of us treat them already nostalgically and lovingly as rarities. After all, the consumer society changed everything so quickly and totally that Soviet life without a trace fell into history, and with it the joys and experiences of those years went into the distant past. Molochkov is interested in this lost world. But he does not feel any tenderness for him. The artist depicts it in detail and with great diligence, filling his canvases with crudely made, crooked, curvy objects, painted in all the familiar dull green, brown or dark blue colors. Molochkov’s still lifes look like evidence of the decline of human skill and skill, the lack of concepts of grace and beauty in the civilization that made them. A feature of Molochkov’s approach to Soviet subjects is the demonstration of their plastic aggressiveness. The artist usually places them in the intentionally tight pictorial space of the picture. The scale of things is greatly increased in comparison with the natural size. Gigantic tablets and buttons, grandiose pans, buckets, batteries “fall out” onto the viewer from the space of the picture. Things that are called to serve man modestly, in Molochkov’s interpretation, acquire some harsh and obsessive character. By corners, pens, valves they “protrude” from the picture and unceremoniously invade the surrounding space. The viewer has the impression that he was in a stuffy and cramped boiler room, where from the walls and from the corners there is a danger of a collision with cutting, stitching and blunt objects. For Molochkov, this class of Soviet things, closely connected with the whole world of Soviet ideas, relations, actions, has not disappeared from the present, has not receded into the past. It is everywhere preserved and just as relevant, it is as actively modeling the modernity as its producers - “scum” and “bitch” (according to the author’s terminology), screaming, vomiting characters that inhabit some of his paintings. The world in the paintings of Molochkov is devoid of deep space, air, light. It is rigidly fenced with walls and fences of various configurations. True, the fences are rotten, some boards fall out of them and are not able to cover all the holes and loopholes. But in them, too, the author does not find the possibility of salvation. From gaping holes, holes, iron drains and pipes to the audience, streams of sewage, streams of muddy water, waves of stagnant slurry “pour out” into the halls from the paintings. No human joy awaits either in this, or even in the “beyond the bounds” world. The misanthropic mood with which Molochkov’s paintings are saturated does not affect the artist’s style of writing. In his peppy pictorial style there is not even a drop of depressive apathy of a disbelieving person. Molochkov’s painting is active and energetic, it captivates with speed and accuracy of execution. The author does not go to the other extreme - in the pictorial denunciation or evil caricature of the motive. His painting does not choke in a hysterical hate. Molochkov is accurate and methodical as a doctor in his analysis and diagnosis of today’s reality. He consistently leads the viewer to sad generalizations, but avoids didactic conclusions. Ultimately, he only draws, that is, inspires us with uncomfortable things, not with words, but with painting itself.

Andrey Erofeev.

V. Molochkov. Battery. 2017. x., Tempera, 100 x 80, courtesy of the author

V. Molochkov. Boot. 2017, x., Tempera, 80 x 100, courtesy of the author

V. Molochkov. Sewerage 3. 2017, oil on canvas, tempera, 80 x 100, provided by the author

V. Molochkov. Pan. 2017, x., Tempera, 80 x 100, courtesy of the author

V. Molochkov. Luke. 2017, x., Tempera, 80 x 100, courtesy of the author