In the hall of the creative business space LOFT1890 (Volgograd, street 10th Division of the NKVD 5A) Stanislav Azarov’s personal exhibition “INDA – Industrial Landscapes” has opened. The exposition includes paintings and graphics created by the artist in 2020-2021 and representing unusual for the public direction of his work.
Stanislav Azarov is known in Russia and abroad, primarily as the author of filigree printed graphics or an artist using mixed media and combining printed, graphic and pictorial elements, collage, drawing, photography, as well as additional objects of various origins in one work. At the exhibition “Industrial Landscapes”, viewers will see works of a different kind, made in traditional techniques and using a traditional combination of artistic elements – oil, acrylic, cardboard, pencil and paper. Which (in Azarov’s case) is quite unusual in itself.
The name of the exhibition most accurately reflects the storyline of all presented works – these are factory buildings, elevators and other industrial facilities. Industrial plots were typical for Soviet painting of several periods [Ryazhsky, Semyonov, Yablokov, Tartakovsky, Koblov and many others], as well as pre- and post-war Western European art [Mercer, Brook, Holmes, Buffet], but now, in the “post-industrial” times, they practically disappeared from the canvases – as well as from the reality.
The works presented at the exhibition are pictorial objects created from the relic radiation of the past industrial era and the very matter of massive objects that increasingly seem to be ghosts. An additional dimension by the fact that all this artworks are all the “reverse side” of the strange and grotesque world of “elephants, angels and people”, represented in numerous graphic series by Stanislav Azarov that is well known to admirers of his work and many collectors.
Nikolay Malygin, President of the Seven Winds Foundation, attended the opening virtually, via a remote connection and a projector. That did not prevent him from giving everyone a small lecture about landscape painting in general and how deep the genre and plot roots of Stanislav’s works are.
It is remarkable that so many familiar (and unfamiliar) people gathered at the opening and that the exposition caused such a lively discussion in the hall. The works of Stanislav presented at the exhibition are really unusual – both for the genre palette of the artist himself and for our times. The exposition format too.
The exhibition “Stanislav Azarov’s Industrial Landscapes” [INDA] will last until February 12. Welcome!
