PARIS.- Kirill Chelushkin lives and works between Paris and Moscow. He trained at the Moscow Academy of Architecture before dedicating himself to drawing, and then to video and sculpture. He draws with graphite on canvas, sculpts in polystyrene and projects his videos onto the mass that has been created in this way. For the first time he is combining his two graphic and sculptural areas of practice into one large diptyque.

The architect still resides in the soul of this artist. The city is the image of the world, a representation of the people who inhabit it and the ideological structures which have sired it. In this latest work, vertiginous views of the post-soviet megalopolis have been replaced a symbolic land, and Moscow has given way to unknown lands which are just as uncomfortable. They say nothing about the conditions of modern life apart from justifying the feeling of vulnerability of the man who stands up – he is getting ready for when the world tilts again.

« At this current time, we are witnessing vast socio-cultural changes. The earth has begun to shift and its geography is changing. We are seeing great masses of population moving from one region of the earth to another. The notion of territory, sliding between the « familiar » and the « foreign », are becoming volatile concepts, subject to diverse political manipulations. And becoming terrain for bitter conflict. By changing, geography is modifying the very essence of the human being. »

We see snowy landscapes, both empty and populated. A land which looks like coal, bringing to mind a deserted battlefield. Unless it is this exceptionally fertile black ground of the Great Steppe in Eurasia, the tchernoziom, where everything comes back to life vibrantly once the merciless winter’s snows have melted.

The furrows that have been gouged here allow no space for delirium (in latin, delirare literally means « to come out of the furrow »)), and yet the landscapes are dreamlike and seem unreal.

In a clever game of surface and depth, hollowed out white matter emerges from the landscape, and when it is shown under a thick grey paste it then is transformed into snow. The abstract shapes formed by these great volumes are as light as they are imposing. They become static so that a point of view of landscapes, fields and a frozen sweep of land can appear.

What does Kirill Chelushkin miss while he is living in France? « A real winter and large, depopulated spaces »