"Nobody does this"

The exhibition of the artist Anastasia Kuznetsova-Ruf opens on January 22 at the Fine-Art gallery at Winzavod under the defiant title: "Nobody does this." Someone may take this statement skeptically, laughing at the most ridiculous argument in any dispute, someone will accuse the author of being overly self-important or overly ambitious, but seeing the work of Kuznetsova-Rufus live, you will immediately understand what it is about and agree with it by the artist’s statement!

The new exhibition has been under preparation for over two years and Anastasia will present 19 new paintings there. Most of them were written in 2020. All works are done in the author’s favorite technique - charcoal pencil on canvas. But the artistic means she uses are the graphics that the viewer perceives as three-dimensional and color! This amazing, recognizable handwriting of the artist is called "viral painting".

Anastasia received a classical art education, which she uses 100% as a tool for the masterly solution of modern ideas.

The works of Kuznetsova-Ruf are full of an abundance of allegories, in them one encounters interesting breaks in meaning, and you understand that metaphor is very important for the author. Her paintings are a box with a secret. They are multi-layered, and the first, striking plot is always followed by another, another and another.

“Even if the viewer’s reading differs from my initial idea, it is interesting and valuable for me, because in this interaction of ideas and interweaving of perceptions, I see a manifestation of the Miracle of Art,” says Anastasia herself.

Perhaps it is precisely because “Nobody does this”: the technical and semantic aspects of contemporary art are so rarely combined in contemporary art, and Mastery is not always saturated with depth and vice versa…

The paintings of Anastasia Kuznetsova-Ruf are familiar to many art lovers in Russia, Europe and Asia. For over 20 years she has been participating in Russian and foreign exhibitions, biennials of contemporary art, auctions and art fairs. Included in the list of the Best Contemporary Artists of Russia (ARTEEX), and her works are in private collections in Russia, Austria, Sweden, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Israel, France, Italy and the State Museum of Beijing in China.

Anastasia Kuznetsova-Ruf