Forbidding Sign

Mayofis revives the almost forgotten technique of bromoil, which allows you to achieve picturesqueness. This technique, which fell out of use just when the advent of the era of mechanical creation was announced, makes photography related to painting. The emulsion is impregnated with oil paint, and the print acquires the picturesque softness of sepia. The artist transforms his photographs into monochrome paintings. Mayofis chooses a large-scale, pictorial format that is not typical of photography, and he makes an imprint on the canvas. Moreover, the reality that they once so wanted to capture in the camera lens is losing its documentary character in the artist's works. His works are metaphorical and allegorical, like the series "Proverbs". In this series, as in Aesop's fables, elephants, monkeys, and bears inhabit our social world, where they play the piano, dance, and pose with a ballerina. It can be said that the Aesopian language of Mayophis's "Proverbs" is embodied not only in the plot, but also in the technical technique itself. The artist speaks the language of photography, but he tells his story in a different way, bypassing, using as an allegory not only animal figures, but also pictorial effects as such.

Text: Olesya Turkina, Senior researcher at the Department of the Latest Trends at the State Russian Museum.