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MIKHAIL TUROVSKYRecent Paintings 2000 – 2004 June 16 to July 23, 2005Opening Reception Thursday, June 23, 6 – 8 PM Exhibition organized by Serge Lenczner In his fifty-year career as a painter, Mikhail Turovsky has embraced the struggle of translating the human spectacle into high art. In 1979, he fled the upper echelon of Soviet Realist painters during the Cold War to begin a life of creative freedom in the United States. Despite the period of doubt that would plague any artist after such an upheaval, he never lost sight of his conviction that great works are not born of superficial effects; they are the fruits of a higher vision, immune to the imperatives of the market. In the catalogue which accompanies the exhibition Serge Lenczner writes: “A humanistic impulse which traces its source to the Renaissance painters, as well as the influence of Matisse, Soutine and Picasso are immediately evident in Turovsky’s work; a closer look reveals a personal style that perpetuates its own rules, its own mythology. Each painting is a question that opens up a multitude of pathways through which pathos and the most basic human vulnerability are brought together. "Form, as it is central to his work exorcises the inessential, the empty, from the chaos created by the current decline of meaning. Whether painting or drawing, Turovsky unfolds an uncompromising narrative of the human and the vital. There is nothing cruel or sordid in this eloquence. There is only the necessity of conveying – with the rigor and lucidity of a master painter – the agonies and antagonisms of a world adrift from its values. "While some may use the term 'Expressionism' to situate Turovsky’s work, a more apt name for his style would be 'Figural-abstraction.' In fact, neither abstract nor human form is allowed to dominate; instead, the two are inextricably bound together by the artist’s act of thinking through painting. "In the course of his explorations of new paradigms, Turovsky has constructed the history of his painting by treating every form of being – both thinking beings and things – as a potential subject. He recycles ordinary objects like bottles, spoons, and chairs, and by relieving them of their usefulness, gives them the status of a work of art. Every subject is accorded equal importance, equal aesthetic value. From the imaginary to the real, from everything to almost nothing, from the center to the smallest detail, everything contributes to the animating current of the work. "In contrast to his earlier periods, which were marked by a sensuality conveyed in vivid chromatic rhythms and richly worked materials, Turovsky now paints in the liminal space between line and color, releasing the paintings from the formalities of an academic line. They are all the more refreshing for it. His current materials – acrylics and mixed media on wood or tar paper – allow for a greater fluidity and immediacy of execution.” |
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