Artist Chelushkin is well-known in the Moscow art scene firstly as the creator of graphic panels which combine – not without a hint of scandal and exceptional effectiveness – the themes of architecture and the study of the porno-image. His participation in the 2nd Moscow Biennale with a truly innovative video-sculpture, which in the foreign press became one of the most cited images of Russian contemporary art, defined his career as an artist of international repute.

Today he lives in Paris, works with the largest galleries in Europe and the USA, participates in prestigious exhibitions and fairs throughout the world. His works, both graphic and object, are in a number of museums and private collections of status worldwide, including the largest private collection of European contemporary art – the collection of Bernard Arnaud, the owner of LVMH company. Kyrill Chelushkin’s new project, created especially for the pop/off/art Gallery, consists of seven large scale works (up to five and a half metres in length), in which the artist’s favourite technique – the multilayered working with graphite – is used on a new medium, specially prepared canvases. It’s as if the artist has taken a step backwards, returning to the planar surface from video-sculpture. In his understanding, the word “adaptation”, taken as the title of the exhibition, is a complex concept which relates both to the “transfer” of his video-objects to a more habitual, accessible format for the unprepared viewer’s perception, and with the reduction of their “mixed” meanings to a clear, expressive, concrete, like a single frame, message, attribute. The theme of the city here is paramount, but on the whole Chelushkin presents himself as an entertaining story-teller and an original interpreter of a host of ideas from all spheres of culture – from philosophy to cinematography. In any case, the canvases shown in the exhibition may be numbered amongst the most masterly and spectacular works of recent Russian art.

Новый проект Кирилла Челушкина, созданный специально для галереи pop/off/art, состоит из семи крупноформатных работ (до пяти с половиной метров в длину), в которых излюбленная техника художника – многослойная работа графитом – используется на новых носителях, специально приспособленных холстах. Художник как бы делает шаг назад, возвращаясь от видеоскульптуры к плоскости. По его мысли, слово «адаптация», вынесенное в заглавие выставки, – комплексное понятие, связанное как с «переводом» его видеообъектов в более привычный, приспособленный для восприятия неподготовленным зрителем формат, так и приведение их «микшированных» смыслов к четкому, выразительному, определенному, как единственный кадр, посланию, атрибуту. Тема города здесь первостепенна, но в целом Челушкин предстает и занимательным повествователем, и оригинальным интерпретатором множества идей всех областей культуры – от философии до кинематографа. В любом случае представленные на выставке полотна могут быть поставлены в число наиболее мастерских и зрелищных работ новейшего отечественного искусства.