NEWS, REPORTS

BORIS LAVRENTIEV ABOUT HIS SHOW IN LONDON

"I do not beleive in a myth about the stiff London - Turner and Shakespeare have been creating here of course and this energy is very powerful. It is certainly alive today - the energy plus the fine taste and sense of proportion. I hope that the guests of this exhibition will not only feel the expression that I’ve tried to put into my artworks, but also see the core nerve of the contemporary world in the paradoxical comparing of heroes, objects and scores - for the goal of art is "to hold the mirror up to nature", as Shakespeare said (I apologize for this solemn style).

Those heroes or artefacts that prevailed in human consciousness 50 years ago today are just small fragments of the mosaics of the contemporary mind and the majority of people have simply forgotten about them. Thus we can admire the beauty of letters of the unspoken language.

I transform the images of these artefacts and heroes, fill them with contemporary sense which is adequate to the present realia, but I do it not in the atavistic "oil-on-canvas" technique but using new plastic means: the Capitoline wolf as a symbol of Russia (as more corresponding notion for the Third Rome) becomes double-headed like an eagle. A rutial Chinese mask phantomly moves from the East. The scattering scores, pictures on them, inscriptions and barcodes, textures and acrylic leaks - by all these my pictures perform the state of our time - the elegance of style and, simultaneously, the expectation. Satire is whispering to the youth something that he already knows: hurry up till you are here; and the barcode graphics by the beginning of the 21st century becomes the main criterion even for such gods as Napoleon and Mao. Still today as well as before there are two values that man can oppose to time - love and art."

EXHIBITION IN LONDON_BORIS LAURENTIEV London audience is looking at "The Third Rome" with a kind of amuzement. On the left - the Capitoline’s two heads off-camera, catches up, as teenagers say)
EXHIBITION IN LONDON_BORIS LAURENTIEV Professionals are more attracted by the technique: how the composition is made up of music scores. Or - can we play it?)))
EXHIBITION IN LONDON_BORIS LAURENTIEV Discussion)
Andrei Tolstoy, professor, associate member of the Russian Academy of Arts Andrey Tolstoy, Doctor of Art History, Professor, corresponding member of Russian Arts Academy
From the press-release:
"Quite often the artist uses scores as the background - and even the very "body" of painting - and this brings some additional historical-cultural sense to his artworks. The difficult authored technique, combination of the acrylic painting and collage strengthen the polyphonic nature of Boris Lavrentiev’s pictures. If we take into account the fact that the master is equally attracted by fine arts and design but also novel writing, we will not dispute the extent of Boris Lavrentiev’s involvement into creating of a new poly-stylistics of the present time."

Exhibition in The Old Triman Brewery, opening reception on 19.11.2010, The Dray Walk Gallery, E1 6QL, London