In Pietrasanta the solo exhibition of the very young Russian Vladimir Kartashov

Starting Dec. 17, in Pietrasanta , The Project Space exhibition space (Ex Marmi, via Nazario Sauro 52), in collaboration with Tg Residency and with the support of Fattoria Camporignano (Casole d’Elsa), will host the solo exhibition of the very young Russian artist Vladimir Kartashov (Novosibirsk, Russia 1997), who for the first time in Italy is exhibiting his paintings, large-format works all made between 2021 and 2022. Kartashov is a young artist who in his creative journey combines knowledge gained on the web (in fact, he supported himself during his studies with money earned from playing World of Warcraft) along with monumental painting that intends to draw on the great medieval frescoes studied in Europe.

Kartashov’s research results in works that represent large frames where only seemingly distant disciplines such as photography, film, painting, video but alsoarchitecture are combined. His paintings are large canvases, almost all of them over two meters by three meters, aligned with those of altarpieces and predellas in which the viewer’s gaze is guided in a complex organized construction of meaning, visual and narrative. Today Kartashov’s work, transmitting his online world to the offline world through ancient painting techniques, is somewhere the intersection of his origins and childhood in Siberia and the global, digital culture to which he belongs. The complex of paintings that make up the exhibition aspire to reconcile divergent elements and narratives to provide a broad and comprehensive set of contemporary and past iconographies.

Born in Novosibirsk, in Russia’s Far East, and raised in Magadan, Siberia, Vladimir Kartashov, when he was only 14 years old, left his maternal grandmother, where he was living after his parents separated two years earlier, to settle alone in Novosibirsk to attend the local art school, paying his rent with money earned online on World of Warcraft. Vladimir didn’t just play online, he grew up there. By being a gamer he earned income online to pursue his artistic path, but more importantly the web gave him access to a global culture that did not exist where he was born. It was on the web that he absorbed Greek mythology and its human tragedies, which echo the mystical sensibility passed on to him by his grandmother, to whom he has always been very close, and which he also finds in the world of online games. And on the other hand, thanks to his training in Novosibirsk, he acquired the technical requirements of the Russian art school. In 2017 Vladimir left Novosibirsk for Moscow where he continued his studies.

Today, what the artist is going through because of the war is not only a personal or national drama, it is also a family drama. Marin, his father, a merchant marine sailor, had children all over the place. And among the siblings themselves, one of them left Siberia to fight as a volunteer in Ukraine while a sister in Mariupol was never heard from again.

“The Russian Far East and Siberia,” wrote ciritco Frederic Iweins de Wavrans, “emanate a powerful, almost magnetic force, but the lack of perspective makes these realities heavy and often suffocates those who live them. Kartashov drew from them an exceptional vital energy, which he combined with the breath of contemporary and digital culture. And if from the tundra Vladimir made it all the way to Europe, the odds being so low, there is no longer a chance. This is because the artist he is, his cultural referents and the themes he evokes are inherently international.”

The exhibition is free admission open daily except Mondays, 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. For information, tel. 3334191734, e-mail: info@theprojectspace.it website: www.theprojectspace.it

Image: Vladimir Kartashov, Enchantress Lane (2021; oil on canvas). Photo Giovanni Ricci-Novara

In Pietrasanta the solo exhibition of the very young Russian Vladimir Kartashov

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