Rudyev Andrei

Most of the plots were found by the author last summer at the Vatican Museum, an exhausting visual marathon through the halls, when by the end of the run the eyes are already unbearably burning from the images, and the camera is filled with many unidentifiable fragments. Some of these fragments were chosen by the artist to create his own series. The space of all the paintings in the series is intentionally divided into two clearly separable planes. For the foreground, the artist selects dramatic multi-figure plots full of movement and vivid emotions from the lives of the gods (both Christian and ancient), while in the background the fiery stigmata of realities are burning, embodying the recently lived (but still burning us) century of scientific and technological progress. The new backdrop adds a different dimension to the classic play. The recent enthusiasm for progress suddenly takes on the features of mythology and is also perceived as conditional antiquity. A modern artist does not have the time available to Renaissance masters, when the rendering of each image is infinitely improved and improved by stringing layers and layering. Rudyev does not try to match or copy the manner of the old masters. He preserves the conventions and stops where the picturesque exercises could still be continued and continued. But convention is much more important here than copying. Let's not forget that behind the author's back (and a man who lived most of his life in the 20th century) is the Soviet school of monumental painting, where the heroic figures and poses of the builders of communism, as in the divine Utopia, were copied from ancient gods.

As in the Soviet song What are our Boys made of, Rudyev and his paintings are made from a mixture of Soviet iconography, Western fetishism, metaphysics, constructivist design and techno music. Willem de Kooning once said, Painting has always been dead, and I don't want it to bother me, and Rudyev doesn't want that. Therefore, he continues to capture his findings on canvases, which form new cells in the box of his story. Rudyev's works are enveloped in a sense of nostalgia and vintage appeal, convey the feeling of looking at a thousand yards – they plunge into melancholic detachment and pull out of the present.

Sergey Bratkov