The merger of antiquity with the future: the exposition “Metamorphosis” works in Minsk

The works of the artist Igor Karpov were presented at the exhibition “Metamorphoses” in the National Library, the correspondent of the Minsk-Novosti agency reports.

The exposition is dedicated to the birthday of Surrealism – the publication of André Breton’s Manifesto of Surrealism (October 15, 1924).

I. Karpov is an architect, member of the Belarusian Union of Architects and the Eurasian Union of Artists. This year he has an 80th anniversary. The master is known as one of the authors of the projects of the Belarusian State Musical Theatre and the Palace of Culture of the Fine-Cloth Combine. At the same time, for 12 years he was the chief architect of the Partizan district of Minsk.

I have actually been drawing since childhood. First he studied at a children's art school, then at an art school, and then entered the Academy of Arts of the USSR, Karpov said. Creativity is a matter of inner content. It has different forms - literature, fine arts, music and others. And each of them leads to certain stories. Some I express in architecture, others in painting, others in poetry. I think the hardest thing about creativity is writing. It is one thing to paint on canvas what you see, and another to create images in your head, it is more difficult, but at the same time more correct in relation to art. I write in a surreal manner. I close my eyes and see what new topics my “internal TV” tells me. Imagination is a very convenient thing. I don’t do sketches, but I work with canvas immediately. It's much faster.

After work, the architect returns home and begins to write paintings or poems. Change of activity allows him to rest

Igor Karpov is one of the few representatives of the surrealist school of Soviet and Belarusian art. It started in the 1970s. This avant-garde trend can also include such famous artists as Georgy Skripnichenko, Nikolai Seleschuk, Victor Alshevsky, Yuri Zaitsev. Each of them differently perceived the main message of surrealism – appeal to the subconscious. This exhibition shows a mixture of different images characteristic of this direction, often incomparable. In one space perfectly coexist mythological, biblical stories and fantastic technical inventions. And even the name of the exhibition "Metamorphoses" is very characteristic of surrealism, which is built on the transformation of an animal into a man, mechanics into a bionic and one time into another. This is a metamorphosis for the author. After all, he is an architect who turned to painting, which is a slightly different facet. Besides, he's also a writer. In this way he expresses his attitude towards the world. As an artist, I am not alien to some elements of surrealism, so the work of Igor Karpov is very interesting. Especially the combination of ancient plots, appeal to eternal problems, opposition of good and evil, reflections on the nature of man. This is what is characteristic of this trend as a whole, said art critic, chairman of the Verasen section of the Belarusian Union of Artists Marina Ehrenburg.

The canvas “The Age of Mercy of Biorobots” shows the feeling of compassion of the machine towards man, figures of antiquity lined up behind him, and divine forces watch from the sky. As everyone talks about the machine uprising, the artist shares a completely different vision of the future.

- In the work of the author, I was most impressed by the painting “The Dream of Mountains”. If you look at it briefly, you will not notice anything. Near it you need to stand a little more to understand the meaning embedded in the canvas. Therefore, surrealism is a very interesting trend, Denis shared.

The exhibition runs until November 30.

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