Exhibition of May 2017

In May, the "S.P.A.S." gallery will show an exhibition of paintings by Sergey Mikhankov "Rain, which was yesterday". This name refers us to the near past, which is still very close - puddles everywhere, the air smells of freshness and moisture. But the artist seems to full this short sentence with additional meaning - everything that happened in the past has a connection with the present and the future. All mankind, all living beings on earth have common ancestors, and their number is small. We are all countless combinations of a few basic elements; our numerous languages have common sounds, and structures, and meanings. Similar faces are found on images of different countries and in different centuries, and different peoples tell similar fairy tales.

In the pictures by Sergey Mikhankov, as in a dream, the faces emerging from the shaky background, whose may belong to a modern man and a medieval one, and maybe this face will appear somewhere in three hundred years. What do the letters, with which the part of the paintings are generously covered, mean? Or they simply symbolize the ancient alphabets, the origin of writing, when something incorporeal - thought - got the opportunity to stay in eternity?

Perhaps, these pictures - a reminder that life consists of a small, finite number of fragments, basic units - here they are, before us: personality, soul, love, speech. The artist not only lists, registers the surrounding world, fixes the history of mankind, but as if trying to look into the future. A light draft of eternity is blowing from his canvases. Before the viewer, two gaping abysses of the past and the future stretch. But an underlying melody of hope breaks through. Only two things are incomprehensible, Immanuel Kant told us - the starry sky above our heads and the moral law inside us. This is what keeps everything up.