12 october-8 november 2009

Pyotr Tatarnikov

''The Flow''

 

петр татарников

Pyotr Tatarnikov is a descendant of the talented Tatarnikov family of Petersburg artists whose contribution to the art of St Petersburg, the most European city in Russia, was instrumental in keeping the town’s highly intelligent culture up to the mark.

Pyotr Tatarnikov’s works can be found displayed at various museums, but the Flow Exhibition, which opens on the 12th October 2009 in the KvadraT Gallery, strange as it may seem, will be the first solo exhibition of his works.

 

Upon graduation from the Repin Institute, Pyotr Tatarnikov worked under A.A. Mylnikov in the monumental art studio at the Academy of Fine Arts of the USSR. Later, he taught drawing, painting, and composition at the department of architecture at the Repin Institute.

 

Landscape art has always been central in his artistic predilections; although formed in defiance of the classical tradition and displaying, rather, latent faculties of the Chinese medieval landscape, his pictorial representations resemble tangible evocation of Nature as seen by the master. Almost all of them are desolate spaces wrapped in sublime silence. The artist conveys the idea of the immensity of earth by means of his peculiar elaborate system of perspectives, which enables him to arrange the picture on the canvas in such a way that it seems to have been seen from above, from below, and from aside. Pyotr Tatarnikov is not keen on imitating Nature and on visualizing the reality; he reflects its cosmic integrity. His landscapes are pithy. Water, trees, stones are engrossed in meditation – the state when time rushes into Eternity. His painting, with its intricate colour- and light-patterns, is at times as deep as is the pearl gleaming on an overcast day; it allows one – on the verge of one’s sensual experience – to penetrate the mysteries of the master’s own illusion of Virgin Nature. His solemn images are so absolute that they seem transcendent, they abandon the force of gravity and transform into aerial creatures.

 

Many of his works dating from the first years of this century reveal a feeling of the harmony arrested just as it was about to lose its balance. The pictorial body of many of his canvases seems to be so overstretched that a slight disturbance, an accidental sigh may break the silence of an ideal world created by Tatarnikov.

 

The Flow Exhibition presents the Master’s works of the last two years, in which his painting breaks all the bounds, reaches an unbelievable stage of freedom and, bringing its irresistible force to its logical conclusion, turns Chaos into the building material for other universes. Pictorial flow sweeps rocks, trees, stones into the Abyss that engulfs everything and gives it a new life. His Painting, having completed the process of a sheer imitation of Divine Nature, emerges free from the bonds of reality to become the Chaos that, again, feels a new surge of lust for the lost Harmony.

 

Olga Thomson

 

About the artist:

 

1972 – completed his studies at the Secondary School of Art and entered the Repin Institute of painting, sculpture, and architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts of the USSR.

 

1978 – completed a practical course of monumental painting under the supervision of A.A. Mylnikov, the Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture.

 

1982 – was granted membership at the Leningrad Branch of the Union of Artists of the USSR.

 

1982-91 – taught drawing, painting, and composition at the department of architecture, the Repin Institute

 

1996 – was granted membership at St Petersburg Academy of Modern Art

 

He lives and works in St Petersburg.

 

His works belong to:

 

The State Russian Museum; St Petersburg State Museum of History; Research Museum at the Russian Academy of Fine Arts, St Petersburg; The “Manège” Central Exhibition Hall, St Petersburg; the Dokuchaev Central Museum of Soil Sciences, St Petersburg; the Nordic Council of Ministers, St Petersburg., as well as many museums and private collections in Russia and abroad.

 

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