Venice. From the Series ‘Drawings from Postcards’. 2012

Valery Koshlyakov’s ‘postcard Venice’ is, among other things, a reflection of his experience as a stage designer -it is from there that the artist’s liking for such large scale canvases seems to derive. However, he destroys these so-called ‘fundamental classics’, depicting, in the place of the fallen empires, ruins that are crumbling to dust: the paint falls in colourful streams, as the perfect, time-tested outlines of antique statues and Renaissance palaces dissolve before our eyes. This is Venice dying and reviving under the brushstrokes of the artist. The piece reflects a continuity of time, a connection between past and present, between world cultures, and between the ideal and the quotidian. He calls it a “historical mystery play”. The theme troubles him, and emerges in his fantasy paintings – his works are pure improvisation and a game of intellect. According to Koshlyakov, “[art] is a secret that eats you away, it is filled with abysmal fear, tragedy and emptiness - there is a certain intrigue in a flat painting.”