Age of Terror...
Grief, madness, hysteria, suicide. The darkness of life are among the subjects of a startling new series of paintings by the Belarusian-American artist, Nicholas Chistiakov, to be shown in September 14 -28, 2013 at Museum of Russian Art (80 Grand Street, Jersey City, New Jersey)
Monsters and Popes are screaming, women and children crying...
We all fear terror could happen here. That life, fragile and beautiful could end suddenly. My art is provocative and brutal. It is about the deepest fears of humanity. I paint what I feel - my inspirations come from news headlines and life observed. I paint my fears. Terror, suffering, hysteria, homelessness, suicide, murder. Those darkest sides of humanity are my
most compelling subjects. Those themes came to my art in 2007 during the time of George W. Bush's Administration, when the words "disaster" and "war on terror" were screamed from TVscreens daily. Not much changed since- humanity always at war. Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria; hard tensions in Iran and North Korea. Just recently, bombings in Boston - we live in a very dangerous and volatile world.
Deeply Tragic - Sensational - Brutal - this how you would describe Nicholas Chistiakov's art in a few words. My pictures could be easily used to headline today's press. Paintings like Hysteria summarizing my fears of war and unethically simple loss of life. Old woman screaming in the face of darkness and death. Face resembling mask. Background - transparent brown-black, head painted with the brave impasto strokes. Another work, Ghost was created as a direct responce to terror of this century. You see an exploding creature - figure of aging businessman or politician on the gray background. Live is merciless and ruthless, so the art. Works of Damien Hirst and Maurizio Cattelan are among closely associated with the Chistiakov's oeuvre.
Regarding the style, I call it Deconstructivism (it is also known in postmodern architecture), a step child of Analytical Cubism. It is a style in painting dealing with controlled chaos of forms and content dissected, distorted and viewed from different perspectives simultaneously. In my earliest works only distorted shapes are commonly in use, but in later works, such as a Portrait of Charles Saatchi, it is seen as defined above.Not surprisingly - I had a hard life and not once experienced psychotic states of mind myself. I tell about painting: Art is like a scream in the crowd. There are thousands of people and you have got to be heard by all of them. Just imagine what kind of scream it should be to be noticed and remembered for years. My paintings are that kind of work - like loud scream of human soul.
Among the great
philosophers who have had the greatest impact on me, I should mention Albert Camus and Friedrich Nietzche. Yet, on my perception, life is a greatest influence and source of imagery. I recall my childhood in Belarus. There were weeks of drunk orgies in the countryside house where I used to spend summers. Boys and girls socialized in every unimaginable way. My paintings are insight into my soul in a same unimaginable and open way. Ever since Vincent Van Gogh cut off his ear and painted himself, no artist has disclosed hismental stress and sick imagination, as I have.
Nicholas Chistiakov is a Belarus born American artist. Born 1981, he grew up in Minsk, Belarus. He studied art at the Belarusian State Academy of Arts in 2000-2004. Upon moving in United States in 2004 he began to show his work with commercial galleries. His art varies from photorealist paintings to deconstructivist paintings and conceptual sculptures. His first exhibition "Time and Measures" shown in 2007 in Behr-Thyssen Ltd in New York consisted of photorealist paintings depicting museums and was commercially successful. Despite that, artist had a psychotic incident and mental breakdown following the show - that eventually led him to a new searches into the deepest zones of human soul and resulted in series of a paintings with very dark imagery.
