"Isomorphic transformation" Exhibition of works by Pavel Turaev in the Russian Academy of Arts

An exhibition of works by the Honored Artist of Russia, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Arts Pavel Nikolaevich Turaev "Isomorphic Transformation", dedicated to the 65th anniversary of the sculptor, opens in the halls of the Russian Academy of Arts. The title of the exhibition offers the viewer a thematic aspect, within which are concentrated important, first of all, philosophical ideas about timeless, and, on the contrary, extremely modern creative space. The exhibition features works created by the author in the last decade.

P. N. Turaev was born in 1955 and received a classical academic art education. A graduate of the famous Moscow secondary art school in 1973, graduated in 1979 from the Moscow State Academic Art Institute named after V.I.Surikov, where he passed a serious school and acquired professional skills in the workshop of the greatest masters of Russian sculpture, President of the USSR Academy of Arts N.V. Tomsky and professor M.F.Baburin. Since 1977 - an active participant in youth, regional and all-union art exhibitions.

Pavel Turaev is fluent in the artistic vocabulary of high styles of different eras and in various means of traditional and modern plastics. Today, the artist’s creative method and the components of his plastic manner, his understanding of the language of sculpture have transformed into his own polyphonic style. In his work, he always starts from the displayed, understanding isomorphic transformation as a distance in relation to the object and the means of creation.

An expressive technique that demonstrates the character and aesthetic properties of the plastic image is Turaev’s use of white. The author presents a number of works made in ceramics, tinted with white enamel. White, a symbol of purity, air and space, reveals the depth of the sculpture’s breathing, the degree of its interaction with the environment and the viewer. "Nymphaeum" and "Transformation of Myth", "Somnambula" and "Saint Christopher", "Scherzo" and "Mask" from the series "Carnival in Venice", "Student" and "Moscow City Girl" - before us are heroes of the ancient world and modernity, mythological stories read in the realities of the XXI century, images of today, free fantasies. Two compositions in ceramics - "Crimean Bridge" and "Metrostroy" - the sculptor’s response to the creation of the largest, even by today’s standards, technical structures.

The artist’s deeply personal attitude to what he depicts is especially characteristic of works devoted to the theme of World War II. The tragic events and intense drama of the war years were vividly reflected in the genre compositions "Victory Day" (bronze) and "And under the Orsha of the Snow" (fireclay, enamel), compositions "Sobibor" (ceramics, enamel). The sculptural still life "Lulav and Etrog" (ceramics, enamel) is also filled with the depth of thought characteristic of Turaev; it perpetuates the memory of the heroes of the Warsaw National Uprising, whose endurance is inscribed in the history of the Resistance movement of the Second World War.

P. Turaev every time finds a unique plastic-expressive form for representing "traces of time" in the image of a person. He has the gift to convey accurate portrait likeness and combine it with psychologism. This is typical for portraits of contemporaries ("Young Pasternak", "Singer Maslovka. People’s Artist of Russia A. I. Morozov", "Composer V. Ya. Shainsky", "Dmitry Pokrovsky", "Portrait of a father. Surgeon N. P. Turaev" and others), as well as works on the theme of sports (series "Sochi. Winter Swimming", "Sochi. Beach Volleyball", "Sochi. Tennis School").

In the works of recent years, the sculptor uses non-canonical methods of shaping, elements of abstraction, skillfully introduces constructive solutions, emphasizing the dynamics and / or monumentality of the work. The author of numerous sculptural works, Turaev also works in the graphic technique, has a series of photographs, and creates videos.

The exhibition opens before the viewer another page of the work of the famous Moscow master, makes it possible to comprehend the aesthetic foundations of artistic expression of the late 20th - early 21st centuries.

The text is based on an article by Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Arts I. V. Turaeva.