Rearward-Facing

The exhibition "Backwards Forward" is an illustration of human perception of the future. The image of the present created by the author is formed by the effect of the news agenda. We learn about events happening in the world post factum. The future is always unknown, unpredictable in the moment "here and now". In Pirumov's conditional spatial model, a person walks "backwards", contradicting biological processes. Misunderstanding of the vector of movement limits mental work, thereby causing anxiety. The author associates these emotions with entropy, seeing an analogy in the chaos that will end with a fall. When the moment of the fall comes, the tension subsides and gives relief, despite the fact that the fear has been realized.

The artist acts as a lyrical hero, whose road reflects the common feelings of contemporaries. The author tries to decipher and deconstruct them, trying to map the path gradually, first considering the past.

Nikita Pirumov uses various cultural codes and refers to previous generations. He creates three alter egos: Eduard Kipyatkov (who died at the age of 73), his future wife Zinaida (the exhibition features her childhood portrait) and Boris Noyman (the character's biography ends at the age of 46).

Hoaxes with alternative personalities become an homage to Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe, who masterfully tried on the images of other people. All of Pirumov's works are permeated with an existential crisis, expressed in the themes of the inevitability of the end and subsequent rebirth. The painting "Backwards Forward" became the key work of the project, it tells about the concept of the "hour of the wolf" - the time between three and four o'clock in the morning. According to statistics, it is during the "hour of the wolf" that the greatest number of births and suicides occur. In the film of the same name by Ingmar Bergman, this hour is the moment between birth and death.

Text: Maya Kowalski