Nikolay Lukin

From the series Cartography of Memory

2011

Mixed technique on wood

20 x 30cm

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NIKOLAY LUKIN (* 1987 Ukraine)

Many of Lukin's paintings showcase prefabricated buildings, soldiers, children, wolves, and weapons of war. Sharply contoured, partly set on a raw canvas, clearly associated with enlarged digital photos. What they all have in common are the apocalyptic mood, the desolation of Soviet legacies, and loneliness. Externally, they are about the artist's homeland, the post-communist Ukraine, a country of upheavals, full of opportunities, danger, conflicts, and contrasts, between hope and hopelessness. Lukin's paintings can be interpreted as a critical examination of the social and political situation of the country But there is the second voice, the voice of a child. Again and again, a little boy appears in the artist's compositions, and one can easily recognize the artist's alter ego. In the large-format diptych “Curfew”, the right side of the painting depicts soulless prefabricated buildings in front of the lead-gray horizon, with an abandoned toy car in the foreground. Nothing else, no people, no animals, no plants. In the left part, the boy is crouching on the floor, locked in a tiny chamber where he is not even able to stand. A wolf lies next to him. Both the boy and the wolf look at a target in the distance. One can feel anger in the boy's eyes, the wolf is watching and is ready for action. Some works deal with helplessness, hopelessness, loneliness - and anger. It is a subtle fight without weapons. An artist's subtle struggle from the ironic distance of his intellectual perspective. Lukin's works are sensitive and brutal at the same time, reflecting the personal social view and thereby creating an art of great and timeless generality.