Nikita Makarov
5.12.2017 - 14.01.2018
Press release
FINIS TERRAE: AT THE EDGE OF THE ENCHANTED WORLD
Address: MMOMA, Tverskoy boulevard, 9
Curators: Andrey Egorov, Anna Harutyunyan
Moscow Museum of Modern Art in collaboration with Askeri Gallery presents a personal exhibition of Nikita Makarov (b. 1980). He graduated from the Surikov Institute in 2008 and since then has devoted himself to exploration possibilities of the landscape. Makarov works in a highly labor-intensive technique, which is close to icon painting. He uses tempera and acrylic on wooden boards in a pointillist manner, referring to the optical experiments of modernism. Multi-panels are juxtaposed with his almost miniature paintings-objects in a specially made frames.
The exhibition in the MMOMA on Tverskoy Boulevard will be a space for contemplation and reflection on the passage of time. It will include urban and coastal views of Italy and France, Spain and Greece, as well as landscapes of a new series, made in Russia in the suburbs of Pereslavl. Equipped with a topographically accurate signatures on the front side, paintings add up into a kind of pictorial road diary. Original photographs that serve as the source for paintings complement paintings. The artist recorded the audio guide, as well as some special exhibits (tools, curiosities, furniture, books) that will create the entourage of imaginary home and studio.
Understated beauty of the world attracts Makarov – not of the landscape, but the lived-in environment, where urban culture interfaces with nature. His landscapes, whether it is desert European beach at dusk in the evening or a snowy Russian town, reminiscent of the fabulous scenery, are perceived as strange, surreal set ups - the border zone between the dream and the reality. The artist is in a passionate dialogue with the past and yet plays with the historically established convention of the genre, showing his own way of revealing the complex, existential-sharpened image of the present.
Exposition
