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THE HUNT
24.04.2014 - 31.05.2014
Alexander Zakharov
On April 23, Ruarts Gallery will present a new project "THE HUNT" by Alexander Zakharov. In "THE HUNT" project Zakharov uses different types of media - such as painting, graphics and also a new type called stereo printing.

About miniatures
It all started with my love for all the massive and large-scale. In New York I started to make color slides from my two-three meter works of that period. Then I scanned them. At that time I took up photography and a brand-new digital printing. So when I looked at these slides, I realized that an image was concentrated in this small square, and that I can expand and enlarge it to a certain format. I liked it and began to narrow-down my original works, creating "stencil", striving for quality and density of a "positive" dyed image. Therefore, these small pictures are those "slides" that I create by my own hands. They can hardly be called paintings, but it is something contiguous with painting and photography. Technically this is more or less a photorealistic lacquered miniature. In my childhood I spent time surrounded by different tiny "things", old books, engravings, miniature sculptures. All the small things attracted me more than bigger things, proportionate to me. The world seemed to be enormous and fascinating. Thereby I have got the feeling of art value that you can put in your pocket, take away with you or put under your pillow. This is a certain value, that allows you to see the whole world, examining the image through the lens, or something striking with its capacity - installations, for example; a value, where you find yourself as it were in the inside of the artwork. Somehow, I live at this boundary, trying to focus my wide vision and put it in a smaller format. About wide-format acrylic works From time to time I make wide-format acrylic works. I scan original small pictures and check them up on a big wall using projector. Sometimes I just take large sheets of paper and transfer images on it. This is what I call "inversely graphics". It is interesting for me, I see my small works enlarged to several meters.

About stereo printing
Last year I took up a new sphere that I would try to comprehend - this is 3D picture-card, but in larger size. This is a natural move forward to the new vision in cinema, in art. This is desire to see tridimensional images of what we used to see flat in modernism. Technologies allow artists to experiment with this field. Nowadays it is possible not only to experience two-dimensional images, but also to transform the image in 3D. Then the image become deeper and the world become childish. As for me, in a sentimental way, there is a certain connection with my childhood, because of the upsurge on stereo-postcards - those strange "bulging things" - stereo images in 60-70-s. Today I convert some of my works into this technique.
I am a print worker and I am engaged in classic printing as well as in digital printing for a long time now. The process is very interesting for me, it always mesmerized me. You take a wooden panel, a stencil, and prepare picture or etching on it, and when you print it then you are always unable to take absolute control and foresee the result. Everytime I wonder what become of the image and how it changes its dimension. I am not afraid if some unaesthetic moments will appear, this is unimportant. Printing is a vivid process and it is always pleasure for print worker to get the results. Communicating with younger people, while I have children in three generations, I understand that they live in a prepared reality. Tridimensional, installed reality, which one can enter, which one can pass by or participate. Cinematography also turns to 3D-format. These interactive activities are very important and interesting for children.
About the hero
A little pink bear is my unprotected part. All parts of my personality are protected, there are a lot of shields, but there is something very personal that is unsecured. And, being an exhibitionist as many other artists, I put it out, pull out "the inner child" in public. This is my personal vision of something, very childish, which I adapt and demonstrate.
About THE HUNT project I've been haunted by fears lately. And this anxiety about myself and children began to grow. I tried to put dangerous situations, translated to children's story, into such a visual imagery. Something scary happens in this tiny world: fright, chasing, attacks. The Hunt seems as mutual aggression and violence. And there may be not necessarily a beast-hunter, but somebody or something just like you, but against you - whoever who hunts you.

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