Solo show at Gary Tatintsian Gallery, Moscow

Apr 3 – Nov 10, 2015
Evgeny Chubarov
Chubarov in his creative work predicted the rebirth of habitual gesture abstraction in a new intellectual form, with its unique found alphabet, its own language and drama, where the image and the concept of its implementation become an integral whole. Ribbon-like signs on his works – like motion vectors of energy waves, the final touches in Picasso's philosophy and Russian avant-garde, the art of which is based on tradition, but reflects a permanent increase in reality layers.
In the deeper layers of Chubarov's canvases we recognize certain impersonal currents of intensity and the super - rational wish of the painting itself, corporeal by definition, like ancient sculpture or Scythian idols, like notches on a forest path or scars on a human body. His painting lives under the crumbling rubble of Logos, infiltrating the pictograms of art. Its archaic forms are constantly renovated, changing under our very eyes, and residing in spaces where the former avant-garde and modernism seem an undesirable arrest of tradition. Its novelty consists in its illegible or downright distorted interpretations when the text reaches such profound depths that any discourse turns out to be completely incapable of rendering clarity and transparency.

Vitaly Patsukov
Curator, art historian, and Head of Interdisciplinary Programs at the National Center for Contemporary Art (NCCA).

Chubarov's paintings are dominated by lines. His works are covered in several layers of lineal ornamentation, while both micro- and macrostructures interpenetrate in the painting process. The work on a piece is carried out in stages, rather than all at once. It is clear that Chubarov had a brilliant inner guiding force in turning his ideas into works of art. Sometimes rounded lines extend from one edge of the painting to the other, that are then replaced by stronger thicker patterns of lines that wrap around the first layer. Then thin rectangular, square or triangular colorful and black blotches are added, arranged in a row, as seen in the images of fragments of paintings included in this catalog. We can also see traces of a squeegee, which was often used to apply a few final layers of paint on top of the previous layers of lineal ornamentation.

- Tayfun Belgin. "Painting, full of Dionysian sentiment", 2016
Chubarov's canvases of the Berlin period represent "non-relational art".
This means that the composition is randomly scattered across the canvas. This arbitrary composition eliminates the internal balance of colors, shapes, and strokes. Nothing is weighed in this limitless freedom. This is where Chubarov performs masterfully.
We are familiar with the principle of a composition scattered all over the canvas thanks to Jackson Pollock. But, while Pollock's paintings arose as a fragment of a larger context (his canvases were cut from a larger canvas lying on the floor), Chubarov always painted his works in a set scale, for example 3 x 2 meters. The artist turned to a specific format and worked within this format with all the freedom of the painting process. As far as we know, Chubarov's work was not done on the floor. He leaned his canvases against the wall or hung them up to paint on them. We also do not see him using splashing or dripping paint techniques, as Pollock preferred.

Tayfun Belgin
Born 1956 in Turkey. Study of art history, philosophy and history at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Dr. med. phil. Director of Osthaus Museum Hagen
These works also tend to transform.
In some cases, these wild multi-figure scenes turn into a world of brushstrokes, which seem to absorb their characters. The works in ink are not representational and undoubtedly refer to the major works of the Berlin period, albeit implicitly. They are characterized by pictorial impetus, while the monumental paintings are dictated by the power of lines.
Images and text content courtesy: Chubarov Foundation
© 2018 Chubarov Foundation, NY. All rights reserved.