Solo exhibition entitled To See & To Comprehend includes a selection of recent works by Semyon Agroskin (b.1961 in Soviet Union) in small and medium formats realized with oil on canvas.
Some works were created by the artist especially for this exhibition.
Semyon Agroskin is a multidisciplinary artist and architect who masters the diversity of mediums including painting, drawing, collage, and installation.
As a painter Agroskin follows traditions and implements the approach of academic school of painting and refer to cultural heritage of fine art. Being an important part of his recognizable style and his art practice, the language of painting acts more as a metaphor, symbolizing the constancy of values and timelessness of narratives and meanings disclosed in artist's works.
Agroskin’s restrained palette which sometimes approaches to monochrome enables the artist and the viewer to perceive the idea and logic of depicted objects directly without being caught by the emotional level of perception.
The images and compositions created by the artist in accordance with canonical genres, such as portrait, still life, landscape, interior, are symbolic and possess multiple meanings being unrestricted by temporal and cultural references.
Compositions and objects imprinted in Semyon Agroskin’s works are characterized by an almost religious ascetic austerity, a cult of simple things, symbolizing freedom from the domination of material values.
Most of the artist's works are permeated with a mystical feeling of an invisible human presence and of things taking place even when the character is not pictured. A broken cup, an overturned chair, scraps of food, or a door ajar are witnesses of someone's history, rituals, and everyday life.
The imagery of Semyon Agroskin is not static, it is not about momentary things or a specific moment in time, it is about before and after, about the irreversible and constant flow of time, transforming the things that we witness into kaleidoscopic memories.
“Semyon Agroskin’s paintings are paradoxical in the internal drama, conflicts and tensions that the artist brings to life through art. The subjects of his work, from the early series Estate Inventory and Domestic Theater to the Living Iron and Othersprojects of recent years, are from everyday life and plainly unambiguous. The objects Agroskin depicts—hangers, linen, pots and tea kettles, people sleeping in train cars and the quick meals of migrant workers—are cause for dialog and for art. For him, the objects depicted are neither instruments of social injustice, nor social signifiers, nor portals into other worlds, nor confirmations of the domination of the everyday over the sacred (or vice versa).
The essence of his work and the force that attracts the viewer’s eye to it is not found in his subjects, not in the empty corners, simple images of everyday life and interiors. If they are perceived as leitmotifs, they can only distract the viewer from the main point of his paintings. Agroskin’s works must be read exclusively between the lines, looking not for what the artist consciously encrypted and veiled, but the opposite: what unconsciously comes from inside him, through his paintings, often against his will: the flickering of searching, doubts, internal states and struggles. Agroskin is valuable not so much for what he masterfully expresses on canvas, but rather for the inexplicable elements that were torn from him against his will as he worked.” Maria Naimushina.
Semyon Agroskin (b.1961 in Moscow, Soviet Union) graduated from MARCHI (Moscow Architectural Institute) in 1984.
The works are included in the collections of The State Tretyakov Gallery (RU), The State Hermitage Museum (RU), The State Russian Museum (RU), Moscow Museum of Modern Art, in private and corporate collections in Russia, France, Holland, Italy, Great Britain, Israel, USA.
The artist lives and works in Moscow and Israel.
