From the beginning to the middle of the 2000s, a plastic and semantic transformation took place in the art of Yuri Nikiforov, who already received the nickname Colonel. Even before that time, the artist was not afraid of expression, brutal materials, large format, or big themes. However, the center of gravity in the works of that period began to shift from solving plastic problems and searching for an expressive gesture to broadcasting social and existential discontent, anxiety and disagreement. Foam rubber, wires, hair, dirt, cigarette butts, rusty bolts, grease, drywall, bent fittings, cotton wool not only complemented the artist's visual arsenal, diversified the set of textures and increased abstract expressiveness. They gave the works an unpleasant and dangerous tactility, insistently reminding of a difficult and painful existence taking place outside the attention of the artistic community. Against the background of economic growth, cheerful consumption, enjoyment of the delights of inequality, secular life and the formation of a domestic version of glamour, Nikiforov's works suddenly began to talk about those whose hardships paid for a protracted banquet: about people of work, about the disadvantaged, about a meager food basket, the ruins of a socialist project and dazzle with advertising brilliance and capitalist promises. About the great inevitable trauma, personal and public, as a means of epiphany and ways to treat it.
Work from different series
SERIES OF PORTRAITS
