Alexander Savko. "Dream Crushers" Automatic translate

Alexander Savko is an underground legend of the 1980s and 90s. He became known as a master of "removing the inseparable" and a wit of a kind of palimpsest, although he did not erase ancient manuscripts or old canvases with sandpaper.

Copying in a free manner and colliding different fragments of art history in his works, Savko weaves alien characters into the composition, who invade the familiar historical space. Familiar to everyone, the heroes and signs of mass culture that live in cartoons and comics mix eras and open up new opportunities for the perception and analysis of the old and the new. Old and new play in the works of Savko on the same stage. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the artist graduated from the scenography department of the Odessa Theater and Art School.

Theatricality and clarity of the built scenes are characteristic of all Savko series. In his works there is a clash between the aesthetics of Western culture and the concept of social realism, classicism and pop art, tabloid and high. Some of his paintings may seem like kitsch or hooligan "painting" in a history textbook, but this is only the seeming simplicity of borrowing other people’s stories.

In his new series, united by the theme of chivalry, Savko creates another pseudo-history. The knights in the paintings destroy the legacy of avant-garde movements, like a medieval heresy. The knight in this case is an instrument of established public opinion. Armored, aggressive horsemen rebel against the heretical trends of Western Europe, those same secret societies that brought formalism and disgrace to art. Such an absurd conspiracy theory.

The absurdity in Savko’s art lies in the fact that the hero of his series finds himself in a unique scene from the historical painting of the past, and the knight has only the present - he is a man of constant action. The author himself associates the knight with the Soviet nomenclature figure. And although such an analogy is difficult to trace, his painting emphasizes the contrast of two different spheres. To do this, Savko smoothes the texture and deprives the space of depth. He also compares the colors of heraldic robes and the “patchwork” of the paintings of Kandinsky, Miro, Malevich and others.

The artist’s project can be described as a series of illustrations for a textbook of the Eternal Middle Ages. "Dreambreakers" is not about the war, but about the fact that the past has long become an inexhaustible source of scenery for the ever-growing present. A quote from Fyodor Romer is appropriate here: “It only seems that Savko’s works are sarcastic and ironic. In fact, our inescapable complexes live in them, forever calling to kiss the sacred stones of Europe at a time when they are already irretrievably buried under the lava of MTV-Vesuvius. The energy of battle and apparent destruction turns into a "knight’s series" - an entertaining, almost "boyish" game of "war", but with deep philosophical overtones. The struggle between the beautiful and the good continues even years later, a world without war is impossible. And we are not just observers, but participants in hostilities, whether we like it or not. Are we knights or members of secret societies,Westernizers or Slavophiles, but still our dreams have not yet been crushed.