DARK PERSONALITIES / HAZY FACES /. Dmitry Solntsev. Painting, graphics, objects

From an article by Andrei Khlobystin “DARK PERSONALITIES” OF THE SUN

Dmitry Solntsev is an artist who has found “his face” and the image of his art. The title of his exhibition “Dark Persons” contains an ironic comment on self-observation and on an attempt to conduct practical research in the spirit of classical art history… <…> Recall the Harms “red-haired man” who had no eyes, ears, hair, mouth, nose, etc. e. What must remain so that “this” is considered a person? - the artist asks. <…>… he is attracted by new textures that arise as a result of combining and overlaying a variety of materials and characters processed by the master during improvised calligraphic escapades. <…> Thus, the process of creating a work / object is both research, and game, and meditation.

Solntsev’s work is initially open to interpretation. In this series of works, everyone is free to see, for example, masks of hockey goalkeepers and Mexican wrestling wrestlers, the faces of comic book heroes, the makeup of the Kiss glam rock musicians, martial or buffoon colors and ancient tattoos… The artist himself sees a source of inspiration for creating this cycle, among other things, in the atlases on the face painting of the actors of the classical Peking opera, where, by the combination of colors, lines and ornaments, the expert recognizes one or another character, its character and condition. <…>

The exhibition consists of several dozens of “faces” of various sizes, performed by the artist in mixed techniques of painting, drawing and collage on wood, canvas and paper, which creates the artist’s palimpsest effect, ambiguity and flickering of meanings. But, if the artist treats the narrative and symbolic side of the work with mocking skepticism, speaking about “types” and “tips”, then he refers to the actual artistic moments: “plotless” ornaments, spontaneous smudges, “writing” with close attention, trying to catch the sum of "an infinite number of infinitesimal terms" is the integral (aspiration) of the image.

about the author

Dmitry Solntsev is a St. Petersburg artist and designer who was born in 1966 in Vyborg.

1985 - graduated from the Secondary Art School named after V. A. Serova, St. Petersburg.

Since the late 1980s he has been working as a graphic designer. At the same time, the whimsical interweaving of bodily and spatial forms became the main motive of the artist.

2000-2002 - studied at the Faculty of Theory and History of Art of the Institute. I.E. Repin of the Russian Academy of Arts.

2000-2003 works as a production designer of the Leningrad Regional Puppet Theater, as well as in the field of fashion industry, creating prints, ornaments, scenery for shows and accompanying graphic materials.

2003 - Member of the DPI of the St. Petersburg Union of Artists.

Major exhibition projects

1993-1997 - Annual exhibitions at the St. Petersburg Union of Artists

2014 - “New Analytics” - personal exhibition in the gallery Master, St. Petersburg

- personal exhibition "Green Tea Room", Hamburg
- personal exhibition in Otokomae Space, Moscow

2017 - “Experiments of tautology in search of meaning” - personal exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. S.P. Diaghilev St. Petersburg State University