Evgeny Semenov was born in 1960 in the city of Pervouralsk, Sverdlov Region. He is a Russian conceptual artist, art theoretician and collector, and is part of the Moscow conceptual artist circle. He is an Honorary Academician of the Russian Academy of Arts.
While I was discussing with Sergei Dozhd his project Science of the Inner Artistic Space, I was interested to find out that we were both shaped by roughly the same culturological material. In particular it turned out that one of the favourite childhood books for both of us was Perelman’s Lively Mathematics.
I am offering the project Lively Mathematics. The works in this project have been created on the basis of illustrations in my favourite childhood books: collections of fascinating mathematical problems. I was attracted by the possibility of transforming a freely chosen picture into an artistic and philosophical image, and using the visual material that took part in shaping me as an individual to express my current attitude towards the world. There is no place for concrete characters in the space that I am offering in my pictures; that place is sacral for me, and “gods and heroes” act in it, just as they should, and if we are more precise, they are signs and phantoms. These heroes are at the same time part of me, and encountering them fills me with the feeling that an adult gets when he chances upon his childhood toy.
In obeying a specific rhythm and plastically working the entire surface of a picture I am aiming to create an artistic space that has its own value. For me this gives the opportunity of being engaged in “pure art” - something like drawing hieroglyphs.
I feel very close to the literary side that is a feature of Russian art. In this instance a picture is also some form of literary genre, and it seems completely organic to introduce text into its space as a fully-fledged artistic component. Following on from the conceptual artists of the 1970s, I, too, reject complex colouristic painting in my works, and reduce the color treatment to a few shades; I strive to reduce an image to a sign, without having recourse to the long-established principle of “sensual deformation.”
Description of work
The Euphoria
The Evolution of Beauty
From the Complex Ethical to the Light Aesthetic
2014, mixed media, 110 x 70 cm
Thirteen Eggs
The Evolution of Beauty
From the Complex Ethical to the Light Aesthetic
2014, mixed media, 110 x 70 cm
Big Explosion
The Evolution of Beauty
From the Complex Ethical to the Light Aesthetic
2014, mixed media, 110 x 70 cm
