Red Gift

Erarta Galleries London is proud to present Red Gift, a group exhibition featuring three prominent artists from Krasnodar, the host region of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. Krasnodar is an area of great natural diversity, and the Olympics will present to the world a view of Russia perhaps incongruous with perceptions of this vast country. Encompassing everything from the beautiful beaches of the Black Sea in the south to mountains and forests, fertile fields and vineyards, to the steppes in the north, the landscape of Krasnodar has long inspired artists from the region. Through the paintings of Dmitry Kochanovich, Sergey Yashin, and Vladimir Migachev, we will be able to experience their impressions of the "Red Gift" that is Krasnodar.

Dmitry Kochanovich's images of Krasnodar are perhaps best described as empathic landscapes. His paintings are romantic, idealised, and highly aesthetic. Working within the picturesque tradition, Kochanovich presents the natural world almost as a Platonic ideal of landscape, one in which elements of man's interaction with nature are perfect and harmoniously in tune with the laws and forces of nature. This mystical quality of his work lends his landscapes an embodiment of the Divine, and the external perfection of the world seen through his artist eyes dissolves into a harmony of unreality.

While Kochanovich composes perfection from the ether of the natural landscape, Sergey Yashin moves indoors and presents the land of Krasnodar interiorised. Having returned to Krasnodar after 10 years in St. Petersburg, Yashin's painting is characterised by intellectual elegance balanced by expressive energy. Drawing inspiration from the Kuban landscape, Yashin's still life paintings convey all the energy and power and variety of landscape Krasnodar has to offer. Even when painting ballerinas, the most exacting and rigorous of classical dancers, they are rendered as wild and uncontrolled as the Krasnodarian landscape. Graceful as the wind through the trees, all of Yashin's paintings contain within them the emotional force of Krasnodar's geography. Surging with powerful diagonals, tactile impasto paint application, and strong tonal contrasts, Yashin's Krasnodar is an emotionally charged personal landscape.

If both Kochanovich and Yashin in their own way seek to harness and control the land of Krasnodar in their paintings, Vladimir Migachev surrenders himself to its power. Often working on a monumental scale Migachev rejects notions of the ideal and the infinite; for him there is only the reality of the earth – trees, water, rock, and mountain. Rendering the physicality of the landscape with an almost brutal and incredibly visceral working of paint, collage, and drawing, Migachev’s Krasnodar is unapologetically real. Like Yashin, his is an incredibly emotional and expressive pictorial language, a mixture of clear description and tactile relief. Migachev's land is so powerfully rendered it exists outside the confines of time and space.

Three artists, each from the same place, each fascinated with their native landscapes, each with a completely unique understanding of its power. Through the paintings of Kochanovich, Yashin, and Migachev we are able to experience some of the wonder that is the landscape, the Red Gift, of Krasnodar.

Erarta Galleries
8 Berkeley Street
London W1J 8DN United Kingdom
Ph. +44 (0)20 74997861
london@erartagalleries.com
www.erartagalleries.com

Opening hours
Tuesday - Friday from 10am to 6pm
Saturday from 10am to 5pm
Monday by appointment

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