MAGICAL FOREST is a phantasmagoria, a collection of tender moments from the early childhood. It is an alternative world with its own space-time, where trees will always be giants.
When creating a representation of daily occurrence, an artist often addresses his early and barely conscious memories. These may be the most ordinary events that nevertheless bring life to his work.
A prominent Russian film director Andrey Tarkovsky once wrote that “Childhood defines one’s life, especially if he becomes involved in arts and should grapple with inner, psychological issues of human nature”. Childhood plays a pivotal role in forming both emotional and rational parts of our nature. It is a sketch of the grand painting or a basement of the to-be building, the final form of which is our life.
The paintings and graphics exhibited under the project MAGICAL FOREST allow visitors to plunge into the world of author’s childhood. This world is full of enigmatic shadows and sunspots, of mighty treetops and intertwining branches that create a vision of peculiar contours observed under the microscope. The angle found in paintings sends us back to that period when the forest was filled with magic. The mind was then able to escape the sharp realism of its sensations to find a mystery in nature. This magic of child’s perception brings us closer to what we thought was left far in the past. The subtle longing becomes a reminder of where we came from – a message from the bright, light-hearted period of our life.
«My childhood took place in Palanga, as all of the grown-ups would call it, but I knew its true name was the Magical Forest. It was this place with its immense park full of giant pine trees and its soft sunshine in the evening that formed me as a man, as a person and as an artist.»
