"Dialogues". Exhibition of works by Svetlana Demkina and Hakob Halafyan

In the halls of the Russian Academy of Arts, an exhibition of works by the corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Arts, Honored Artist of the Russian Federation, Honored Artist of the Russian Federation Svetlana Demkina and corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Arts Hakob Khalafyan. The exhibition includes paintings, graphic and sculptural works created by the authors in recent years.

Hakob Khalafyan was born in 1953 in Armenia, graduated from high school in Krasnodar, and there he received higher education at State University: first at the Faculty of Physics, then at the Art and Graphic Department. He is the author of personal and participant in more than forty international, zonal, academic, group exhibitions. Hakob Halafyan’s sculptural compositions adorn the streets and squares of cities such as Taganrog, Moscow, Gorno-Altaysk, Krasnodar, Sochi, Lipetsk, Novorossiysk and others.

The innate sense of form and material allowed the artist to reveal the diverse possibilities of metal. To create his sculptures, the author uses a wide variety of techniques for working with this material - from traditional ones such as punching copper and hot enamel, to the most modern ones - plasma cutting, powder paints, digital technologies. All the work of Hakob Khalafyan is deeply personal, based on emotional experiences and intellectual understanding of reality. The master tries to open the visible, superficial form, inviting the viewer to a contemplative dialogue.

The exhibition presents about two dozen sculptor’s works made of metal. The exposition allows viewers to get acquainted with the imaginative world of the artist, his search for a new plastic shaping, to engage in emotional empathy.

Svetlana Demkina was born in 1951 in the Donetsk region. Currently lives and works in Krasnodar. The sphere of interests of Svetlana Demkina includes various types and genres of art, she successfully works as a monumental artist, designer, sculptor and ceramist. She graduated with honors from the Moscow Art and Industrial College. Kalinina and the Moscow Higher Industrial Art School (formerly Stroganov). Demkina’s works are exhibited at exhibitions both in Russia and abroad, and are in museums and private collections in Russia, the USA, Germany, the Czech Republic, France, Cyprus and other countries. Dyomkina successfully combines creative activity with active social and pedagogical work. She is the chairman of the Creative Union of Artists of the Kuban, as well as a professor at the North Caucasus Federal University.

Svetlana Demkina’s creativity is characterized by a high professional culture, unique artistic solutions, and vivid imagery, which is the result of a long and creative career. A variety of life conflicts, keenly experienced by the artist, are transformed in her works into clearly structured compositions made in a catchy authorial manner. Her work is characterized by coloristic minimalism, expressive volumes and original color schemes. Living in a multilayered cultural context, S. Dyomkina boldly combines epic and lyrics, archaic and avant-garde, painting and graphics in her works. Bright decorativeness of color relations, a wide brushstroke, non-standard compositional finds are characteristic features of her work. She is able to masterfully give her painting either graphic stiffness or amorphous softness of the spot, achieving in contrast unexpected harmony.

The exhibition includes paintings and graphic works, some of which will be shown to viewers for the first time.

The works of S. Demkina and A. Khalafyan embody the most lively artistic ideas and arise at the junction of plastic forms, materials and new ways of applying them.