«MADE  IN  ITALY»

 

Gennady Zubkov needs no introduction. His position on the Saint- Petersburg art scene is strong and stable. Zubkov is a participant and organizer of numerous exhibitions, the founder of the school, the custodian, successor and promoter of the method that goes back to the system of his teacher Vladimir Vasilyevich Sterligov.

Zubkov is an adherent of the system and plan, in his works there is always a clearly defined task, the subject is considered as a plastic element, and the composition takes on the form of a formula. However, the desire in the first place “to draw a problem” (Sterligov) does not lead to rationality and schematism: in the works of the artist we invariably feel a trace of living, direct contact with reality. 

Gennady Zubkov is undoubtedly an established artist: a recognizable stylistics, a specific repertoire of themes and motives, the employment of the usual medium of painting. However, he does not stop at what has been achieved and is able to surprise. Not that Zubkov had never turned to pastels before, but at this exhibition it leads an autonomous existence, appears as a new material. Even the quantity itself becomes a substantial quality: there are many, very many sheets, they form an infinite tape of continuing images, simultaneously similar and different. The technique itself paradoxically unites the speculative and organic: the linear "pattern" structures the image, turning objects into signs, a large "grain" of soft and sensual pastel strokes penetrates the contours, returning to them, objects, "physical", material existence. The state of these still lives is the best fit for the German (and English) definition of the genre – Stilleben (“still life”). Objects (pears, apples, bottles, bottles, jars, cups, glasses, vases, jugs, pots, glasses) stand or lie side by side, touch each other or keep a distance, form groups or line up ... The main theme of these works are the interactions and relationships: silent, trusting "conversations" of objects, light rhymes of forms.

The world in Zubkov’s pastels is not simple, but harmonious - it’s not by chance that the “figured part” of the image is inscribed in some abstract planes perceived by a grid of coordinates (both literally and figuratively). And this is a lesson for the contemporaneity, often losing its foothold. Another thing is also important: in Zubkov’s pastels, the time run is suspended, and valuable experience of “slow” existence has been returned to us, albeit briefly.

 

Irina Karasik

COLLECTIONS

State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

State Museum of City History, St. Petersburg, Russia

Collection of the United Board of the Museums of Leningrad Oblast, St. Petersburg, Russia Pushkin International Federation of Artists of UNESCO, St. Petersburg, Russia

Diaghelev Arts Fund, St. Petersburg, Russia

Museum of Fine Art named after A. Pushkin, Moscow, Russia

Museum of Modern Spiritual Art, Colomna, Moscow region, Russia

Museum of non-conformists art, St. Petersburg, Russia

Art Museum’ of Kareliya Republic, Russia    

Contemporary Art Museum, Tomsk, Russia

Kemerovo Regional Art Museum, Russia

Arkhangelsk Art Museum, Russia

Check Point Charlie Museum, Berlin, Germany.

Saturn Bank, Moscow, Russia

Art Museum, Yaroslavl, Russia

Norton Dodge Collection, Meckanixwill, Maryland, USA

Deutsche Bank, New York, USA

Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Museum of Art, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA

West Hypo Bank, Dortmund, Germany

Doctor Diter Boden collection, Germany  

Herr von Lambsdorff, Berlin, Germany

Irina and Victor Xenzov, St. Petersburg, Russia

Nikolay and Galina Sidorov,  St. Petersburg, Russia

Rutgers University, New-Jersey, USA

The Tatyana and Natalya Kolodzey Foundation, Moscow, Russia and New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA;

Petrovsky Bank, St. Petersburg, Russia