Savva P. From "Terracotta worriers" series.
Artists | |
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Year | 2011 |
Material | Oil on canvas |
Size | 480 × 177 cm |
"Terracotta Warriors" - 14 large-scale paintings showing the viewer how important it is for the teacher to know about his responsibility for future generations. This is an artistic performance, and thus it conveys our thoughts about the meaning of proportion, as well as a reasonable compromise between man and society. This project is a search for a visual interpretation of individual freedom and a sense of duty. We have used classical painting techniques in this series, but we have never used brushes. The smooth surface of each image is created thanks to a special artistic method, where the edge of the palm of the hand is used even for the surface of the painting, this allows me to achieve a particularly deep gradation of tonality. Monumental pictorial portraits by contemporaries can formally be attributed to photorealism, such as portraits of students of artists from the Terracotta Worriers series.
When looking at giant paintings, Gulliver's Swift journey to the midgets, then to the giants, comes back to mind. The idea that everything in another world is of a different size, the ratio of the scale of the world and the person: the project appeals to the depths of our subconscious. The wordplay between worrier and warrior is associated with the famous Chinese sculptural army and the unformed consciousness of a child, which is gradually molded, as if from clay, into a complete image. The portrait gallery is a projection of the images that you carry within yourself. Magnifying the figures multiple times allows you to create a realistic and truthfully meaningful image of your models on the canvas. These projections persist as long as you see your reflection in them, as long as there is mutual trust and interest between you and the students, as long as they are your likeness, but not your identity. They grow in direct proportion to how much of your experience and knowledge you put into them, striving for a speculative ideal of personality that is generated by your imagination."
At some point, they outgrow the teacher and become completely independent. Their gaze is directed straight ahead, and you remain out of their field of vision. The screened view space mystically creates the illusion of limitless perspective. Time passes, Shapes change, but the need to find your way and outline your circle remains unchanged. History repeats itself again... Recalling the words of Yuri Lotman, "the time of a portrait is dynamic, its present is always full of memory of the past and prediction of the future."… The portrait constantly fluctuates on the verge of artistic doubling and mystical reflection of reality."
Text: Dmitry Gretsky