Artist Statement

When I was about seven years old I decided that I was an artist. I never questioned this decision and never changed my mind. I am not sure it’s a good thing, it’s just the way it is. 

When I was around the age of twelve, I fell in love with Paul Gaugin’s painting “A Girl with a Fox” — one of the pale naked young woman lying in a field with a fox on her shoulder. I felt there was something mysterious going on with the fox and the woman, and I was desperate to know what it was. Some time later I had found an alternative name for that very painting: “A Loss of Innocence.” This came along with a lengthy explanation of how Breton folklore identifies the fox as sexual awakening. At that moment I realised that I had been aware of this all along. I also knew that, however accurate, the folklore explanation had ruined for me all that was magical about the painting. To this day, I hate artwork explained — my own above all. 

So it happened that I left Moscow, my birthplace, and moved to Germany for several months. At the end of that stay, instead of returning to Moscow, as I had originally intended, I found myself in New York. Six years later I left New York for Turkey, where I lived for the next eight years. Finally, I came back to Moscow, only to leave it for Turkey two years later. I am on the slow move in an unknown direction for no apparent reason. Maybe I am completing a cycle of sorts — in this case New York should be next in line. I find it fascinating, the secret geometry of life. 

I never knew how to describe myself as an artist. I think the key word is “seeing.” There are things I suddenly see, and I feel the urge to show them to others, just the way that I see them. What these things are, I cannot tell: they could be anything. If I was a sniper, I would not know what my targets were; instead, I would wait for them to show themselves and once they did I would know them, and I would hit them by not aiming at them. I hope this makes sense, as it is the best explanation I can muster.