Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art presents an exhibition by the CUBE artist collective presenting the Russian North in a quirky surreal light
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Paintings and sculptures revealing a whimsical world in which myths and legends are interwoven with everyday reality
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A tale of people braving the harsh northern nature all the while preserving human warmth
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An artistic enquiry into the cultural heritage as key to understanding our own selves
Since the CUBE collective’s first show at Erarta Museum in 2021 this Perm-based group of fellow creatives has transformed into a duo of sculptor Yuri Shikin and graphic artist Yegor Subbotin.
Their new exhibition was inspired by the Russian North, albeit not so much in the sense of a geographical location as a philosophical concept. The artists invoke a vision of a singular world in which myths and legends are interwoven with everyday reality, revealing the deep-rooted cultural foundations of the present. The duo use their creative practice to uncover the delicate mental threads running through the past, present, and future.
The Warm North project celebrates the endeavour of recluses, be it lighthouse keepers, polar explorers or biological research station supervisors. The artists found inspiration in thinking about the fragility of life amid harsh nature and the tremendous spiritual strength required for this life to go on. In their rendering achromatic northern landscapes morph into an imaginary world more like a metropolitan neighbourhood enlivened with street art.
Yegor Subbotin comments: ‘The North represents something distant, cold, and lifeless, a place one would be willing to travel to, but not live in. However, only by experiencing the cold can one discover warmth.’ Yegor’s pictures feature bearded men, professional contemplators and observers, witnessing incredible inner transformations. His works relate the worldview of a human being facing inhuman, unfriendly circumstances. Vibrant colours, gentle wolves, and hot tea lend these paintings an optimistic ambiance.
According to Yuri Shikin, ‘One of the project’s working titles was Heat Line, indicating the soul’s warm connectors laid in the icy crystal world of the North, from human to human, from past to present, and on to the future.’ The sculptor is responsible for the Warm North’s fauna. His quirky bestiary boasts anything from dancing humanlike creatures straight out of a lubok popular print to minor demonic beings like the self-invented elemental spirits called ‘draaafts.’
Members of the CUBE collective believe in the cultural code as one of the main keys to understanding the quintessence of both an individual and the entire nation. Studying it through our cultural heritage we move closer towards understanding ourselves and the society we live in.
Sometime in the early 2000s, several young Perm-based artists teamed up to establish a collective living and creative space. The art squat that emerged as a spontaneous hub for independent culture transformed over time, changing its residents and broadening its range of visual practices. Nevertheless, the collective’s artistic creed remained unchanged: they view the cube as the key element of the nascent space, the underlying module of the game that is art. Today the former squat has morphed into a shared studio with a crystallised artistic strategy: the CUBE is its three-dimensional and multifaceted structural unit. It is this many-sidedness, tendency to tackle every issue from all angles that acts as the connecting link between the artists Yuri Shikin and Yegor Subbotin.
