Ievgen Petrov
COLLISIONS
24.05 - 30.06.2012
While almost the entire ‘industry’ of Ukraine’s contemporary art is promoted solely on trendy topics in a shaky effort to please somebody, Yevgeniy Petrov draws viewers’ attention to really in-depth, not to say philosophical topics in his new project called Collisions.
Simulating only tones of security, the humankind thereby creates zones of exclusion, where first and foremost phenomena that create fear are directed. The moment of collision with the reality is the very main disadvantageous nerve of any Event, which a society tries to anesthetize in any possible way. But systematic anesthetizing creates certain neuroses within the society itself. Symptoms of these neuroses are manifested in people’s desire to experience disasters by putting on 3D glasses in a movie theatre or, in a worse case, by using services of companies that promise to give their customers this cherished feeling of safe fear.
Petrov treats this problem with a phlegmatic approach, opposite to the mainstream one. On his canvases we will not see panic, which is fed to us by mass media. But we will see a boy who unhurriedly picks his nose on the background of an eruption and children who continue to play despite the surrounding chaos. The artist delicately feels that moment when an Event smashes the canvas of everyday life into pieces, thereby forcing us not to procrastinate but bring predecessors’ bluff to account and make a new canvas of everyday life, in which we will have to live until the next agitation of the nerve of the reality. In other words, we have to perceive disasters as a fact and view them as a driving force since the nature is reconstructed by them and everything that we take from the nature now are consequences of the past disasters. Moreover, people’s perception has become somewhat different – now it is difficult to surprise them or at least fix their attention on the things that are happening. This is not their absent-mindedness or clutter of events; more likely, this is their perception of the phenomenon of collisions as something of everyday nature and something that is next to them. An old English saying “A miracle is a miracle only nine days” is one more confirmation of the above.
In addition to the topic of the project, this time Petrov will also make us happy by his new approach in technical terms. In a manner which is uncharacteristic to him, the artist uses oil on canvas and not watercolours, which are traditional for his oeuvre. But undoubtedly the works look perfect as always and this is one more indication of Petrov’s outstanding genius.
Do not spend your time on regular viewing of ‘disastrous’ videos on YouTube but rather come to the Tsekh Gallery and enjoy Petrov’s inimitable art.
Sasha Geller