EXHIBITION "MY WAY - MY WAY"

The magazine "MY WAY" presents an exhibition of creative works of combatants.

The exhibition includes works of painting, graphics and cartoons - more than a hundred works by three artists working in different genres:

Renat Shafikov, Major of the Special Forces of the GRU, a participant in the hostilities in Afghanistan and the North Caucasus;

Roman Genn, American cartoonist, author of scandalous cartoons about George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Joe Biden;

Iskander Galiyev, a participant in the hostilities in Afghanistan as part of the 9th company of the 345th paratrooper regiment, the author of the idea and military consultant of the cult film "9th Company".

BALLPOINT PAINTINGS

Artist Renat Shafikov - Major of the GRU Special Forces reserve, participant in military operations in Afghanistan and the North Caucasus, in the Fergana events, Baku-Sumgait, the Osh events in Kyrgyzstan, in Nagorno-Karabakh, Stepanakert, Lachin, on the Tajik-Afghan border, in the civil war in Tajikistan, in Chechnya.

His main business in that war was intelligence, but his drawings can be used to study the history of wars in hot spots. Most of Renat Shafikov’s works are devoted to the war in Afghanistan, in which he participated after graduating from the Tashkent Higher Command School in 1987. It was in Afghanistan that a young lieutenant, the commander of a reconnaissance platoon, began to sketch with a ballpoint pen on sheets of paper. He always carried with him a school notebook in a cage, and to save space, he filled every free centimeter with drawings on a foil. Numerous fragments in one picture could be drawn at different times - this is how collages were obtained.

The author depicts the reality surrounding him extremely realistically, often without taking any position towards his heroes. In his paintings - the Afghan village of Kora-Kola, surrounded by the peaks of snowy mountains, the owners of desert roads, camels, a wall pierced by a shell, behind which there are flowering fields and a peasant working his allotment. Shafikov’s graphics are devoid of pathos, his works are lyrical and surprisingly accurately convey the atmosphere of the events that took place in Afghanistan 35 years ago. Their author is a true nugget: not having an academic art education behind him, Renat Shafikov created several hundred works, among them illustrations for more than 150 books.

WAR ON THE TIP OF A PENCIL

Former Muscovite Roman Genn is now one of the most famous political cartoonists in the United States. In Soviet times, Roman was repeatedly taken to the police because of cartoons of Soviet leaders. Over the past decades, the artist has collaborated with major American publications, including The National Review, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post.

He is best known for caricatures of political figures of the past and present, made in oil on canvas in the style of classical painting. The novel has been to Afghanistan twice, capturing the life of the American Marines, observing people who are between life and death. During one of the combat exits, he was almost blown up by a mine, then as a result of the explosion, his comrade’s legs were torn off. At the same time, there are almost no combat actions in his drawings: instead of bursting shells and hand-to-hand fights, there are warriors preparing food, good-natured farmers, peacefully talking to the patrol. War makes every person reconsider the system of values, think about the meaning of life, and, oddly enough, teaches humanity.

WINDOWS TO OTHER WORLDS

For Iskander Galiyev, creativity has a special meaning - cinema and painting have become a part of his life. He shows the world in bright colors through the prism of fantastic images and plots. Scander’s style can be classified as ironic postmodernism.

In many ways, the plots of the paintings are based on playing around with mythologems of the past, stereotypes of mass culture, as well as plastic deformations of reality. In the paintings, irony takes on the character of a provocative gesture in relation to the prevailing stereotypes of people’s thinking.

Irony in this case arises in the context of culture, when the artist’s action contrasts with collective ideas about how the paintings of a person who went through a war should look like.

Some works are figurative generalizations with a philosophical overtones, others interpret vivid life impressions. When starting work on a painting, the artist does not always know what will come of it: "Accidental events from life suddenly melt into a painting, and sometimes, only after completing the work, I understand its hidden meaning."

Historical parallels with artistic trends of the first half of the twentieth century are noticeable in Iskander Galiyev’s work. Spontaneity, surreal imagery, in which reality and fantasy are bizarrely combined, freedom in the choice of artistic means - all this with thato dominant features in European art soon after the First World War, to a certain extent as a consequence of the catastrophe that invaded everyone’s life.

“There is a logic that I start with chaos, and this is the most natural beginning,” wrote in his diary Paul Klee, who was called up to the front in 1916 and lost in that war two close friends-artists - August Macke and Franz Marc. Paul Klee’s concept “Art does not reflect the visible, but creates it”, asserts the subjectivity of creativity, has become a creative method for artists without academic education. “I want to be like a newborn, knowing absolutely nothing about Europe, not suspecting facts and fashion, almost primitive,” Klee wrote at the beginning of his career.

On the eve of the exhibition, Iskander Galiyev said: “By painting on the walls of caves, primitive hunters performed a magical effect: with the help of a painting, they could influence the outcome of the hunt or change their Fate. The contemporary artist is essentially doing the same. By creating paintings, we open windows to other worlds. ”The proceeds from the sale of paintings will be donated to help disabled veterans and the families of those killed.