Exhibition "Armed with sight. Personal exhibition of Andrey Esionov"

The new exhibition of the Shchusev State Museum of Architecture, the concept of which was proposed by the critic and curator of the exhibition, Alexander Borovsky, presents to the general public the work of the modern Moscow artist, academician of the Russian and Florentine academies of arts, laureate of national and international prizes Andrei Esionov.

The exposition will include about 100 paintings and graphic works, including watercolor series on acute social and everyday subjects, as well as pictures of the philosophical and religious genre. Some of the works will be presented to the general public for the first time.

Mandelstam’s image for the title of this exhibition was deliberately chosen. Esionov is a visual artist. The expositional solution directly emphasizes the moment of the visual experience as an existential value. Everything can collapse (the theme of "Ruins" - the name of the museum site is played up), but this value will remain: Yuri Avvakumov, the architect of the exposition, creates a situation of shelter for each thing, as he says, like a reliquary, a tabernacle.

Andrey Esionov has occupied an important niche in contemporary art, which can be described by the term empathy, conscious empathy. He is confident in the surrounding reality, does not sympathize with everything and knows that the natural situation will not deceive and will reveal his inner meanings. The master trusts his "eyesight", his ability to "understand what he saw", to hear the main thing, not to be carried away by strangers.

Relations with the media also fall under the category of empathy, that is, with material and technique - oil and watercolors: sensitivity to their independent inner life. A little trust, and the watercolor itself will extract a new meaningful layer from a simple street scene. In painting, a smear will lie in such a way that it will work to characterize the famous model in addition to psychological nuances, or, in a painting on a religious-philosophical plot, it will give the desired spiritual glow.

The painter’s watercolors and paintings are far from cloudless, he is worried about both the eternal problems of being and the challenges of current life. However, it is important for the artist of empathy to confirm the stability and stability of the picture of the world. And he succeeds - in harmony with himself and his expressive means.

Andrey Yesionov is a graduate of the Tashkent State Theater and Art Institute named after I. A. N. Ostrovsky in 1990, appeared on the Moscow art scene in the early 2010s, already a spiritually and professionally formed personality. It was a rare instance of an independent, unsystematic creative start. At the end of the decade, the artist wins the attention of museums. And the most diverse - the State Russian Museum and MMOMA, the State Museums of Fine Arts of Tatarstan and Uzbekistan, the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence and the San Salvatore in Lauro Museum in Rome.