ref: c^v Oct 30-Nov 25 2007 SALON RUSSE at the Gallery in Redchurch Street Four Weeks of Contemporary Russian Art in London - return to Galleries PR Index



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"Four weeks of contemporary Russian art in
London"
Salon Russe at the Gallery in
Redchurch Street
The Factory,

50 Redchurch Street,

London

E2 7DP

30th October – 25th November 2007
Yuri Mosijchuk, Alexander Babin
Dmitry Sandjiev, Alexander Zhernokluev
Admission Free
http://www.salonrusse.com
Press Enquiries:  Elena Borissova 0777 606 2491

 

Press Release Sandjiev

 

For new-wave post-soviet artist Dmitry Sandjiev the story of his epiphanic art conversion reads like a report form the "X-files".

But even Fox Mulder and Dena Scully would find it an incredible case. A cloudless night, a lonely railway station in southern Sweden, just a couple of miles from Malmo airport and a Russian painter abducted by alien beings from another world. That's the way Dmitry Sandjiev insists it happened, and he's been painting Lucy in the sky with diamonds ever since.

 

"What I do know is that 48 hours of my life went missing, and my only memories of the event are of aliens," says the painter.  "I stopped painting reality and instead started working on my series "Myths of the Planets'".

Now his work goes on show in the Salon Russe exhibition at the Redchurch Street Gallery, Shoreditch, which runs from October 30th till November 25th. Each week features one of four leading exponents of Russian contemporary art: Anatoly Mosijchuk, scheduled to open the first week, followed by Alexander Babin, then from 13th -19th November Dmitry Sandjiev and finally Alexander Zhernokluev.  
One of the keynote exhibits at the show will be Sandjiev's new mixed-media version of his four-panel "Early Reincarnation of the Beatles", quadriptych, which has been sold to a Russian oligarch.

 

Sandjiev's inspirational influences know no bounds and he is equally admired in the West. His "Broken Time" triptych inspired by reporter Barbara Olsen's last mobile phone call from Flight 77 that hit the Pentagon on 9/11, is now on permanent display on Capitol Hill.

After more then 110 exhibitions all around the globe, Sandjiev's work is held in many public and private collections in Russia, Europe and the United States, including

 
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Ludwig's Collection in Germany, and New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The artist has been described as "leading global innovator of mythological-influenced fantasy" and as creating "an entirely new universe in painting and graphics".

 

His paintings are an indefinable phantasmagoria of many influences – from Buddhism, and Islam to Christianity and Russian Orthodox iconography and adorned with an audacious suffusion of aliens and angels.

 

The show is a brainchild of 34-year-old Sotheby's Institute of Art graduate Anna Korganas, who lives in St Johns Wood backed by wealthy Moscow-based art aficionados.

 

Korganas has a treasure trove of contemporary Russian art stored at Christies fine art security vault, which has been selling like wildfire to a growing band of discerning British collectors. "Our clients are wealthy British people who prefer to stay incognito. They include a top executive at Deutsche Bank who has a great collection of Russian Social Realism, a member of leading Stockbrokers Charles Stanley, and a CIB Hedge Fund Senior Manager" – says Korganas.

 

The London show will be a prime opportunity to experience Sandjiev's visions of mythology, spiritualism and cosmic fantasy as seen through his mixed-media originals.

 

If people find such images disconcertedly disturbing, Sandjiev would say well and good: "I believe that the only criterion for whether art is good or bad is that when you look at it, you shouldn't be able to take your eyes off it – then it is real art."

Exhibition curator Korganas knows exactly what the Russian visionary artist means: "I am always shocked to see the effect his paintings have on people – people look and it's as if they are hypnotised. It is the Gorgon effect."

 

ENDS