IVAN KORSHUNOV
Gallery I

...and have rare professional qualities. Using the traditional technology of three-layer painting, as well as gold leaf, being a perfectionist, the artist creates well-thought-out and well-organized compositions, in which there is nothing accidental.

Scanning, feeling, and realizing the modernity, he evaluates it with a healthy look of a traditionalist and, perhaps, someone will consider him a medieval knight in armor, sitting on an ultra-modern computer. But it is precisely the presence of cultural and historical memory in Ivan Korshunov, who is not only an artist but also a specialist in Byzantine painting that makes his works special.

The new exhibition project by Ivan Korshunov "Surrogates" monitors traces of the influence of virtual reality in various spheres of human existence, considers large-scale substitutions of concepts and images in the modern information world, as if he has managed to find visual embodiments of the widely used concept of "simulacrum" today.

According to a number of French philosophers, such as Georges Batay, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean Baudrillard, we have long been living in a world of simulacra and surrogates, in an era of total simulation, in a world of double-talk. The world around us is changing rapidly every day. For a modern man, there are more and more 'introductory' perceptions of reality.

Recent events on a global scale, first connected with the pandemic, during which the project was created, and then with military operations, make new adjustments to the understanding of the way society functions, to interpersonal and international relations, forcing us to rethink information flows and forms of communication, changing the order of life that was familiar to us. We have become accustomed to many changes, but there are some others left we cannot put up with.

On the one hand, the project contains the ironic pathos about the values and symbols of the global consumer society, which has replaced reality with surrogates (relations, food, objects, information, art, etc.), in which the person himself becomes to some extent a simulacrum, and on the other hand, there is the disturbing issue of a dead end, a possible collapse, the "Burial of Globalization". The children playing war in the picture named "Soldiers of the Third World-I", painted in 2020, seem to be expecting the reality of another world, to which we may yet have to adapt.

Fr om a visual and plastic point of view, the whole project is divided into two parts, wh ere the ironic and cheerful reading of the gold-background works is opposed to the "seriousnes"’ of the perception of the dark-background works, which figuratively reflects the duality and variability of the theme taken.

The semantic space of the paintings created two years ago in some cases may have other implications along with relevant interpretations and this no longer refers to the original author's intention, but to the independent life of works in historical time. Despite everything, a man remains in the space of a consumer society among surrogates that capture him, and this remains a natural theme of reflection.

In the current paradigms of a rapidly changing reality, the once topical question of who we are in this world and what we are is starting to sound again. Ivan Korshunov is convinced: "The essence of a man, his origin and purpose, his place in the world, have always been and remain the main problems of philosophy, religion, science and art."

Curator by Erarta Museum Vdadimir Nazansky

The second nature can kill a man's quality of light and may drive the person into a corner from which he will not be able to escape. It can transform an adult, wise human experience into a kind of infantile child who is unable to take decisive action in a critical situation or show previously hidden aggressive sexuality.

Sometimes, we try not to dwell on issues that are unpleasant for us, thereby only pushing the solution to a problem.

It is difficult for adults to overcome the barrier of accumulated knowledge or life experience, to believe in some miraculous manifestations in life. It is much easier to do for a baby.

Ivan Korshunov