A number of gigantic back-characters and back-images, substituting the traditional classical portrait, are presented to the spectator.
Executed in graphite on the fragile side of the developed stereotypes of classical drawing and modernist tendencies, this work shows the endless, still unsolved potential that is entailed in the classical manner, but rather intricate for interpretation nowadays.
By startling and provoking the spectator towards the easy recognition of the visible images, the artist gives us the chance to overcome stereotypical thinking and to translate perception in a world of physical empathy – including pain, human force, vulnerability and perfection. Just as with a repetition of a leading musical phrase, a theme with easy variations intensifies the effect of its influence, and a complete number of these monumental images creates an epic picture of the power of the human spirit. The phenomenon of turned backs is also a hallmark symbol of protest, provocation, and self-isolation.
A measure of reality and the specification of any image created by this author is always an associative property of perception on the part of the spectator, which he calculates with delicate psychological logic. Any further interpretation draws him into the realm of abstraction, and together with the recognition of images, this produces a shocking, even hypnotic effect. Thus, creating a human image to reflect his backside is the author’s own method, built on a minimal amount of information about the subject and the maximum profoundness of the canvas in general. The author has developed this approach thanks to his understanding of the metaphysical depths of perception, bringing to life a powerful stream of experiences and flight of imagination, and imbuing his objects with individual character and extending the frontiers that have been outlined by the artist himself.
The idea of the “BACK” project, which has crystallised itself in video sculpture, represents “an inversed space” and “an inversed event”. Unlike the majority of artistic practice, which aspires to achieve a “breakthrough into space”, here it is possible to speak more so about an inverse process – the conversion of space, and of an event into an object, into a subject.
In a video sculpture created by Chelushkin, the flat image is a projection, pulled over its own three-dimensional model. The plasticity screens the video, and the video is materialised through the plasticity of the sculpture. Both components, partly spontaneous and partly planned by the author, generate the third substance – a three-dimensional living image that is simultaneously surrealistic and recognisable, filled with dynamics and internal life.
Both components: the white sculpture and a video picture – are not self-sufficient. The idea of such a strange formation reveals itself just as soon as the LIGHT falls on the surface that has been prepared for this purpose. The movie, the photographic documentation, and the drawings take their forms and start to BE weightless, white, and artificial within the video material.
By this experience, the artist makes a new move in a game of reason, by touching the untouchable.
The plotted inversion of both subject and space as a whole, enhanced by an inversed video projection that is involved in a sculpture – this all supplements and even intensifies the general idea of the exhibition.
