"The boundaries of the image:
incompleteness and infinity." Exhibition of works by Valery Evdokimov

The exhibition halls of the Russian Academy of Arts (Prechistenka 21) will host an exhibition of sculptural and graphic works by academician of the Russian Academy of Arts Valery Andreevich Evdokimov.

The exhibition “The boundaries of the image: incompleteness and infinity” by Valery Evdokimov chamberly and sequentially combines several themes and motifs that the sculptor has been addressing for many years of his own creative activity. The exposition includes portraits of Russian philosophers, writers and clergy, as well as works on classical music and concert performance. In addition to easel sculpture, drawings are presented at the exhibition, which are more likely to be considered not as a separate practice, but as a study of the artistic research of space mastered to reveal the qualities of the material and the plastic form.

The basis of the creative style of the master, as a graduate of the Moscow State Art Institute. IN AND. Surikov, of course, is a classic academic school. In the plastic works of Valery Evdokimov, she combines with the experience of ancient Russian icon painting and European art of the twentieth century. In the work of the master organically coexist works performed in the traditional manner, as well as in the style of non-figurative art. The basis of the compositional solution of his works is the study of space in plastic created by form, rhythm, movement, the interaction of the density of the material and the environment.

In the portrait genre, the sculptor prefers images of creative personalities - artists, writers, philosophers, musicians. Achieving almost documentary similarities with the physical appearance of the person portrayed, the master psychologically saturates the image, showing his spiritual individuality.

The faces of Rozonov, Florensky, Tolstoy and Vederinikov, iconographically recreated poses of Solovyov and Dostoevsky, as well as the virtuoso gestures of musicians - S. Richter, A. Knyazev, M. Voskresensky - are iconic elements of the "center of the world." In it, the special generational position occupied by the sculptor, existing in today’s space and time, in the vast extent of the fate and results of the twentieth century, is conceived as an ethical desire for an “emotional” future.

The "spiritualization" of the model is present both in portraits of thinkers and ordinary people. This "poetization" makes the characters interesting outside the context of time, the nature of their activities, domestic circumstances and emotions. The harmony and internal existential tension of the image determine the plastic solution of the work, its composition. As significant as creating a composition or portrait, for Evdokimov is the constant work with nature.

Graphic works of the last decades are characterized by the same kinetics as in plastic. The meaning of the work is not the image of the model, but the captured movement. The most static in the artist’s work, unlike sculptural compositions and drawings, are plastic sketches. Often in these small-sized compositions with nude models, classical plots of the art of antiquity and Christianity are guessed. These academic studies are compositionally very harmonious, partly monumental and, as a rule, marked by subtle “body poetics”.

Sculptural studies and full-scale drawings by Valery Evdokimov have long outgrown the scope of ordinary academic studies. The artist makes an endless journey from a two-dimensional space of a drawing to a three-dimensional space of plastic.