solo show Igor Litvinov

«Existence of light»

06.09 — 18.10

Winzavod Сontemporary Аrt Сentre, 4th Syromyatnichesky Lane, 1/8, p. 9, entrance 22

"Igor Litvinov's work is on the edge of the problem of overcoming the personal emotional element for the sake of entering the open space of absolute pictorial freedom. The method chosen by the artist is designed not just to show the deliberate inferiority of "reality", but to contrast the absurdity of what is happening in the material world with the transcendental chaos in which absolute pain reigns. Fractured, distorted, and deliberately caricatured human characters are presented in combination with a tragic, disturbingly expressive, and extremely tense abstract background. 
 However, this seemingly natural stylistic unity on Litvinov's canvases turns into a mysterious counterpoint - a polyphonic chord that paradoxically combines ruthlessness and compassion, the bottomlessness of infernal spaces and the saving will to light, hopelessness and hope, hell and purgatory. Capturing the drama (or comedy - but in Dante's interpretation) of unity and opposition of everything to everything else, the artist's optics nevertheless has the gift of penetrating into the abstract and concrete nature of space-time, including through an appeal to the most ancient cultural codes and mythologemes. Igor Litvinov actively uses archaic metaphysical plasticity as a way of self-cleansing from the dictates of linear logic and common sense in the name of achieving the sacred ecstasy of clairvoyance, which allows him to guide the viewer through the back labyrinths of otherworldly existence in order to prepare him for the upcoming cataclysms. 
 Igor Litvinov considers art, and especially the mystery of creating paintings, to be an endless mystery with no beginning and no end, once and for all caught up in it, the artist cuts off any contact with anything and completely immerses himself in the magical ritual - as an irrational element of the unpredictable. The succession of seemingly wild, barbaric images born of his brush and temperament is shaped into a kind of pictorial action - akin to shamanic ascents and immersions into parallel worlds. As a result, the disturbing, stinging, swiftly-aggressive, striking strokes turn into an epic symphony of volcanic magma - the ideal building material for the end times.

Each canvas by Igor Litvinov is another radical experiment, a leap into the abyss, the madness of a brave professional who sacrifices his own spiritual and corporeal existences, and - as an apotheosis - a furious dissection of reality, designed to mark and confirm the artistic will of the author, who in his own way manifests the eternal relevance of expressionism for today and tomorrow". 

арт критик Игорь Дубинский