Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art presented an exhibition by the Vladivostok-based artist Sergey Merenkov whose paintings feature an amalgamation of irony, lyrical absurdity, and poetry
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Highly original works executed in the genre of a short visual story
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A glimpse of the quiet and yet self-sufficient lives of people who have escaped this hectic world
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Touching and slightly funny protagonists bearing much resemblance to our own selves
Despite the existence of a distinct Vladivostok art school and studies at the Far Eastern State Academy of Arts, neither geography nor professional training account for Sergey Merenkov’s thematic and stylistic peculiarity. They are more readily explained by the phenomenon of his personality, which could have emerged anywhere, be it Minsk or Nizhny Novgorod, but so obviously crystallised in Vladivostok – the city of open spaces, light, and air. It stands to reason that Merenkov’s characters find themselves not in an urban environment but in a kind of universal emptiness. The artist himself defines his style as naïve realism, although his instantly recognisable painting manner is far from overt simplicity – it is clearly full of integrity and sophistication. The accents in his art are neither narcissistic nor colour- or form-driven, but rather semantic. Merenkov’s preferred original genre is that of a short visual story or parable. His artworks are an amalgamation of irony, lyrical absurdity, philosophy of romantic nonpossession, poetry, and grotesqueness.
The artist does not shun the narrative: as a matter of fact, his paintings are akin to illustrations in a book recounting some eccentric exploits with kind irony and sympathy. Like the Moomins, his weird characters exist far from the hectic world, living their quiet and self-sufficient lives still full of humaneness and dreams. Merenkov’s protagonists are touching and slightly funny. They are like us. In fact, they are us – in a highly stylised, theatrical embodiment. The same occurrences befall them as everyone else who has been challenging meanings since biblical times and dwelling ‘far from the bustle of the city’ in nearly primeval, rather uninviting emptiness. Sergey’s works are like ironically tinged lyrical stories of human reverie featuring distinctive recurring themes alluding to collective cultural memory.
Born in 1976 in Vladivostok, Sergey Merenkov graduated from the local art college and the Far Eastern State Academy of Arts in 1996 and 2002 respectively. The artist’s solo exhibitions took place in multiple venues across Russia and abroad, including France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Standing to his credit are several prestigious Russian art prizes and three distinctions of Le Salon des artistes français in Paris: the Audience Award of 2018, the 2019 Bronze Medal, and the 2020 Silver Medal.
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