MIKHAIL YERMOLOV "Park named after the Memory of Culture and Rest" Historical pictures. Painting, Graphics

My memory - returns me to the magical world of the holiday. Draws pictures / historical /, covered with patina and rust of time. Mikhail Ermolov.

The exhibition presents works of two types - pictorial miniatures on canvas and large paper sheets with color graphics. The miniatures, made extremely skillfully, expertly, specially aged, carry elements of naive and represent, as it were, portraits of children in sailors or fur coats, toys, flowers, flowerpots, etc. not of our time. Real simulacra attributes of a happy past. On the contrary, the graphic sheets are executed in an expressive manner, through a background densely filled with strokes of paint, like through a fog of time or memory, an airship with the inscription of the USSR, an airplane before the era of a jet or a squadron, as a very small man can imagine or portray, clearly and clearly appear. Mikhail Ermolov about the park of his memory: “My Park is a special world where there was everything: a carousel, fountains, an ice rink, hot bagels, gazebos, a ferris wheel, lemonade, clowns, pigeons, benches, bacon, horses, cotton candy, airplanes, flowerbeds, flowerpots, toys, sausages in the dough, music, laughter room, candy canes, shooting gallery, ballot boxes, cinema, balloons, sculptures, green theater, etc., etc., etc. "

This is a nostalgic project about childhood that lives in us until the end of our days, about childhood without gadgets, the Internet, mobile phones, video cameras, computer games, etc., about childhood with games in the yards - from morning to evening without adult supervision, about escaping to the movies with your favorite characters that you really wanted to be like. And trips to the circus with the clown Pencil, Sunday festivities with parents in the parks, riding on a ferris wheel, on a swing, for distillation on greats, on cardboards from ice slides, and wooden horses and other few toys, often home-made, roughly painted, but such favorite? Of course, this is the memory of a generation of grandfathers and middle-aged fathers. I recall the nostalgic documentaries of A. Gabrilovich - Yards of our childhood, Cinema of our childhood, Football of our childhood, etc. This project can also be called - Pictures of our childhood. Today’s young generation, on the contrary, will remember how, until adulthood, adults took them by the hand, where, what countries they went with their parents in the summer, how they taught exchange languages, etc., and virtual reality and real life are not separable, about yard games into Cossack robbers, 12 sticks, a puncher, etc. will recognize, if read, from books. Everything passes, as King Solomon told us.

So, the paintings are aged simulacra, and the name of the exhibition carries a double meaning or ironic implication. Park - memory and culture, and relaxation. As if with time, culture has disappeared into the past. It seems that the artist in a modern conceptual language answers the company against contemporary art with the closure of exhibitions at the request of anonymous hooligans, with the unpunished destruction of museum exhibits and attacks on artists and writers. Time is continuous, as is the history of art, which is constantly developing in variability.

Mikhail Ermolov In 1955, participating in exhibitions since 1980, his works are in the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Toyama Museum of Modern Art, Japan, Lahti Museum of Modern Art, Finland, Essen Poster Museum, Germany, Cinema Museum Moscow, Museum of the University of Colorado, USA, in private collections. He was awarded medals and diplomas at various international exhibitions.
Irina Filatova