Stas Volyazlovsky

CHANSON ART

September 10 – October 5, 2008

REGINA Gallery has the honour to present the solo exhibition CHANSON ART by Stas Volyazlovsky – more than 20 graphic works of the artist performed on textile (bed-sheets, pillow-cases, towels) and “wall newspapers”. Art of Stas Volyazlovsky was called by experts as Art Brut, and the artist himself determined it as “Chanson Art”. His first large solo show at the REGINA Gallery draws the attention with desperate thematic tricks, unexpected technique and hardcore political reflection. An awfully strong mixture of politics, pornography, cabbalism and crime lyrics juxtaposed against the backwaters of the Moscow “actual” life offers a true explosion of impressions to the visitors of the show at REGINA Gallery.

Volyazlovsky’s artworks are essentially psychedelic trash legends based on the most urgent topics of today. His main characters are Pushkin, Hitler, Putin, Saakashvily, Yushchenko, Timoshenko, singer Mikhail Krug, and fauns, “lolitas”, “Dr. Plagues”, mutant nurses, Dracula, children outlaws and Kolobok depicted on bizarre textiles showing a distant resemblance with shrouds. Volyazlovsky’s canvases are bed-sheets, pillow-cases and towels dipped into “chifir”, an extremely strong tea which is very popular among inmates of prisons, they are littered with texts, graphics and ornaments performed in violet ballpoint pen. Almost all artworks are accompanied with “ritual” texts. The abundance of obscene words, crime plots, stylistics and techniques used in criminal tattoo combined with profound lyrical confession-like intonation of the artist speaking of himself and of the world allow the author to call his creations “Chanson Art”, coining thus a new term.

“Chanson Art is a peculiar reflection upon the world where I exist, the world with its interests, problems, fears, religion1, new spiritual and cultural values of our time, its TV broadcasts packed with idiotic commercials, dismembered bodies, crime, pornography, movies series and politics, its yellow periodicals and Marinina-like crime pulp fiction, with its Internet, an infinite source of useful information to meet every demand. It is also possible that Chanson Art is not just reflection for me, it is something of art therapy. And I really can free myself from all I mentioned above that crawls into my mind against my own will, when I take it and pile it out in a concentrated popular print form on some sheet of paper or old second-hand bed-sheets covered with my drawings in ballpoint pens…” Stas Volyazlovaky

To mark the opening of the show at the REGINA Gallery a catalogue of this exhibition was published. It contains an more than 50 illustrations presenting Volyazlovsky’s artworks.

Stas Volyazlovsky is a graphic artist, an author of video, photographs and objects. He was born in 1971, graduated from an art school and the courses of interior decorators. Took part in the work of the R. E. P. and the Totem club art associations. Based in Kherson (Ukraine).