Mastery does not always presuppose seriousness, and Konstantin Batynkov, one of the leading Moscow artists, consistently proves this. The ironic title of the exhibition “Cheerful Pictures” talks not so much about its content, as about the author’s particular artistic vision. What is seen in his works is more like a “cheerful apocalypse”. The works, of different sizes, made in acrylic on canvas, significantly differ from his previous series of paintings. The author actively applies colour, rejecting the use of the mono-chromaticity, which has become associated with his style. Being a contemporary artist, Konstantin cites the colouristic arrangement of Classical painting, but uses the compositional techniques from the language of the screen. And at this intersection between traditional Art and visual mass production Batynkov opens up the possibility of the realistic representation of the quiet apocalypse which saturates life. The global and universal nature of our world has as its consequence the fact that man exists in an environment filled with tension and various incidents. Daily encountering dramatic news, we become accustomed to living in peace with them and even divide them into significant and secondary.

In Batynkov’s “pictures” we find the artist’s favourite landscapes exposed either to internal disintegration or to external destructive influence. The author maintains his customary irony, which is expressed in his works in two ways: in the systematic enumeration of unexpected events, which fill our environment and in his use of colour, which namely imparts “cheerfulness” to the image.

In the given series it is precisely colour which creates the main tension. Batynkov uses not only his traditional way of working with details, but also a profound colouristic range. As in his works – where people are the mere motion of a brushstroke, so too is Batynkov’s art – first and foremost, a lively motion of the soul.

Andrey Tolstoy, in order to characterise such a quality in Batynkov’s art as “contemporariness”, offers to attach yet another prefix “post” to the term “Post-Modernism”. Choosing an extremely serious theme, the artist diffuses it in the lightness of its execution. In almost all the works of this exhibition there are recognisable images on the verge of extinction. One of the paintings refers to a topical subject – the Central House of Artists, the building itself, in the process of being destroyed. However, everyone knows that today it still stands, but no one knows what will happen to it tomorrow. The word “pictures” in the title is also not accidental. Made masterfully, but as if in passing, they are like frames from a documentary chronicle. The viewer becomes a reader, he is not offered deep interpretations, but what is emphasised is transience and instability. The artist does not strive towards expressiveness; he chooses such viewpoints which make us observers, but not participants in what is happening. Batynkov’s art is far from being a game and it cannot be said that the world for him is an illusion, a maya. The author stands on the fine boundary which divides Religion and Art. And that is precisely why it is impossible to reproduce the method chosen by the artist for overcoming “the unbearable lightness of being”.

Along with the tension of the content of the works, Batynkov continuously creates an artistic reality filled with gentle aesthetics. Perhaps it is this quality which compels the viewer to follow the transformations of the worlds created by him, as if following the fates of the heroes of one’s favourite novel. The artist’s works reconcile man even with the apocalypse, in which Konstantin Batynkov finds a certain ironic beauty.