Alexander Koryashkin. Prologue

The Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art presents an exhibition by Alexander Koryashkin, where everything has already begun, but nothing has happened yet.

● A series of absurd but impeccably written episodes in which humor merges with anxiety, the plot does not guarantee a resolution, and it is generally unclear where this is all heading ● An artist of the academic school, using rules to break them ● A state of eternal prologue, in which even death is not the end

At first, the plot seems perfectly normal. Ostriches stand peacefully in the landscape. Then, strange rabbits appear next to them. This is a glitch, but still tolerable. A raccoon is discovered in an anatomical poster of an ear. One could stop here and call it a joke.

But the joke doesn’t end. It doesn’t develop according to the laws of humor: it has no climax or resolution. It simply continues, as if reality itself has lost its sense of relevance. A real native with a boomerang ends up next to a painted kangaroo. Body parts take on a life of their own. The Queen, for some reason, knights a tree.

At some point, it becomes clear: the action has already begun. The characters are in place, scenes are strung together, but nothing happens. The event seems to hang in the air, without turning into action.

And then death appears. The pelican lies on the shore, too seriously, too realistically. And next to it is a comical cartoon creature, as if the image couldn’t bear its own weight and tried to throw it off. Even here, what happened doesn’t become fixed — it loses its clarity and doesn’t become final.

Alexander Koryashkin received an academic education. This is a school where images must be convincing and logical. Since 2015, he has been teaching drawing himself, meaning he works with this system on a daily basis. And that’s precisely why it’s especially interesting to observe how easily logic can slip.

A significant portion of the works included in the exhibition were created during the pandemic, in the confines of home. These paintings were conceived not as a grand artistic manifesto, but rather as a way to occupy oneself and distract oneself from the overwhelming fear and sense of meaninglessness.

Absurd works consist of a chain of strange dialogues, where humor constantly coexists with anxiety. The world in these works doesn’t disintegrate; it continues to exist as if nothing had happened, but the familiar connections within it no longer work. The image remains convincing, but this conviction ceases to explain anything.

This is the "prologue." But it’s not an introduction to what will definitely happen next, but a state in which "next" may not even occur. We’re used to thinking that if something begins, it must lead somewhere. But perhaps this is just a habit.

About the author

Painter and graphic artist Alexander Koryashkin was born in 1984 in Kuybyshev (Samara). He graduated from the Petrov-Vodkin Samara Art School in 2004 and from the graphics department of the Ilya Repin St. Petersburg Academy of Arts in 2010. Since 2015, he has taught drawing at the St. Petersburg State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering.