Creation myths

Rafflesian – this is what the artists named their project, hinting at the tropical parasitic flower, which is exceptionally appealing and beautiful from a distance, but has the foul stench of a rotting piece of meat up close. This attracts insects that perish while pollinating the plant. The rafflesia bloom is fleeting, like a flash, and then it turns into a dried up black box. To be reborn again, it must be crushed by elephants or hyenas, which spread its seeds on their feet and fur.

There is something shameless and repulsive in the ingestion, the penetration of each other, the interwoven bodies – and here it is revealed in the very nature of the art form, as if it shares the properties of living matter. In this series of works, painting itself is obsessed with ingestion, although the events taking place are veiled by the Baroque excessiveness that overwhelms and hypnotizes the gaze. The vicious vitality of the floral forms is experienced at the microcellular level in the fanciful lace of spider threads, in the swaying of unsteady jellyfishshaped blurs; the eye has to continually guess at the obscure figures cultivated on the canvas like spots of mold on the wall.

Text: Gleb Ershov