The Space of Impulses: Works by Nikita Makarov in ARTPLAY Design Center on the Yauza

Organized by the Russian Academy of Arts, ARS LONGA Gallery, Photohub_Manometr, the Space of Impulses exhibition project is an art story about a recent visit to Italy presented by the young artist of the Russian Academy of Arts Nikita Makarov from an unexpected viewpoint, where photography and painting are exhibited not simply in one space, but also within one plane.

Nikita Makarov is an extraordinary phenomenon in today’s culture. His works combine in one concept project two poles of art: traditional art (the technique, the principle of the supremacy of painting, direct connection of the object with the idea) and actual art (the subject matter, principles of the generation of images). It has made it possible for two such different galleries as ARS LONGA and Photohub_Manometr to show a unique exposition where photography and painting do not contradict, but rather directly communicate with each other.

In the context of this project photographs play the role of fixed and preserved impulses which serve not so much as a material for an artwork creation, but are reminders of the act of inspiration that the artist has gone through. The correlation of a photograph as a document of reality with a painting helps to explore and analyze the language of painting. The artist’s first encounter with the reality is fixed in a photograph and his empathy with the space and time arouses inspiration – this is the way the image of Italy is being born.

Nikita Makarov belongs to the ambitious and talented generation of Russian painters that has been formed in the new time, but still within the framework of traditional schools. At the age of 9 he moved with his family to Germany. He lived in Europe, saw a lot and thought about many things, but returned to Moscow to study art (in 2008 he graduated from V. Surikov Moscow State Academy Art Institute where he majored in painting under Academician E.N. Maximov). His talent has been formed on the junction of two cultures – Russian and European. Nikita Makarov’s works arouse associations with paintings by Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard or George Seurat. He is a Russian European, a man of so rare now not declarative, but a real and poetic talent. He has participated in the recreation of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow where he proved himself as an artist. Nikita Makarov is searching for the actual in the tradition and traditional in the actual.




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