Valery Koshlyakov

Valery Koshlyakov : Painting as the Archive of Culture

Valery Koshlyakov thinks not in categories of time, but in categories of cultural spaces, where emptiness is more important than presence since it preserves within itself the spirit of the time, zeitgeist, which the artist then relays to the viewer. On giant pieces of corrugated cardboard, Koshlyakov creates monumental images of past grandeur, which amaze with their compositional rigor and the nobility of the fated fading. Like all monumentalists, he is totalitarian. The subjects of his paintings are Pompeian frescoes, Constructivist Moscow, Greek, Roman, and Stalinist architecture, Gothic cathedrals, monuments from both the Renaissance and contemporaneity. His painting on corrugated cardboard pretends to be a masterpiece from epochs past found accidentally in the dumpster. Trash, under his brush, turns into an object of reflection and becomes priceless.

Alexander Evangely