Sergey Alferov. Weather vane of the astral winds

Exhibition project “Sergey Alferov. Weathervane of the Astral Winds" will be held at the ARTSTORY gallery from May 30 to August 4, 2024. Most of the presented works and author’s photographs will be shown for the first time. These are early works, starting from the “nonconformist” 1970s, and later ones, which the artist created until his tragic death in 2004.

The complex, incomparable art of Sergei Alferov, based on contemplation, meditation, philosophy, is a closed system with a unique primordial memory. The spirit of antiquity, which attracted and beckoned the artist, dominates his works. His works are almost always series and improvisations. “It would be less interesting if you knew in advance what would happen,” he said. In addition, the artist did not like to name his works - he wanted to give the viewer room for imagination.

Alferov never copied the surrounding reality, but created new worlds of the human spirit. He did not write from life, but always transformed visual and musical images in his own way. By the way, music was one of the artist’s brightest hobbies. Alferov spent his entire life collecting a collection of ethnographic music from different nations, to which he worked, most often with headphones. The melody dictated the drawing and filled the image with mythology.

It is no coincidence that the artist’s exhibition is taking place precisely in the anniversary year of ARTSTORY’s 10th anniversary. Gallery co-owner Lusine Petrosyan actually rediscovered the almost forgotten artist back in the late 2000s. “I wanted to tell about Alferov’s fate, because almost no one knew anything about him, and the artist’s works were present in the collections of many famous collectors. For about a year, together with Anna Moreva and Igor Dudinsky (1947-2022), we collected materials for the monograph “Preface to the Inevitable,” which published the memoirs of many of the artist’s friends and acquaintances. We did a major museum project “Isomythology” at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. The time has come to show the works of Sergei Alferov in his native gallery. Moreover, the exhibition will be significantly different from previous ones. Some of the early works were donated to ARTSTORY by Alferov’s close friend, Alexander Kedrin.”

The famous art critic Valery Turchin (1941-2015) wrote: “In the art of Sergei Alferov, everything is a code, a symbol. This is needed, in demand. There are “beauties” and grotesqueries, hints and half-hints, quotes and the invention of something new, something yet unseen. The East is whimsically mixed with the West. Childlike spontaneity with professional delights.”

And here is what one of the first researchers of his work, Igor Dudinsky, said: “In fact, the entire creative path of Sergei Alferov is a bizarre interweaving of different mythologies - in the picturesque, everyday, ethnographic and metaphysical senses… Iconography and popular print, abstraction and the magic of reality, expression and detailing, Dadaistic disregard for the canons and faith in the beneficial influence of tradition. Alferov’s gift to create masterpieces with the ease of a celestial being possessing the highest knowledge allowed him to rapidly give birth to entire worlds where fantastic creatures and no less bright human-like entities live.”

Along with painting, graphics, rare author’s photographs (in them Alferov deliberately chose the simplest forms for constructing frames, treating the world of lonely things with careful trepidation), viewers will also be able to read amazing stories told by artists, art critics, and collectors. Among the authors: Doctor of Art History, Professor Valery Turchin, journalist, writer, member of the nonconformist movement Igor Dudinsky, Boris Beach, Sergey Bordachev, Alexander Kedrin, Katya Medvedeva, Larisa Pyatnitskaya, Vladimir Tryamkin and others.