Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art presents an exhibition by Danil Danilovsky whose landscapes, in line with the Russian painting tradition, provide vivid accounts of man’s dealings with reality
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An opportunity to see the opposite states of nature as a reflection of the world the only constant of which is change
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Striking landscape paintings depicting the Russian North as austere, pristine, and pure
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Canvases presenting to the viewer the human inscape, mercurial and inconsistent as the very nature of our being
Danil Danilovsky’s landscape paintings reflect his love for the Russian North. The distinctively heavy, water-logged clouds and the particularly bright, life-giving sun of the brief northern summer are all present here. The scenery of the artist’s homeland appears exactly the way he sees it. Conceptually, however, Danilovsky’s paintings are closer to the tradition established by Savrasov and Levitan whose landscapes could provide a telling account of the Russian character and dealings with reality.
The artist’s background is not wanting in hands-on experience: he went on many exotic journeys, was obsessed with cinema, but ‘painting and the North kept their hold’ on him. ‘I went back to where I had started, but this time renewed, prepared for independent work, full of ideas and meanings. I paint because this is the only thing that makes me complete and my life integral. In my landscapes, the wild northern nature comes across as austere, pristine, and pure,’ says Danil.
To a certain degree, Danilovsky’s painting practice reflects the current trends. Danil applies oil on canvas in thin translucent layers as if it were watercolour, aiming for an evocative effect of light shining from within. The resulting intensity and vibrancy of colours echoes stained glass, whereas the smooth texture puts one in mind of a digital image displayed on a luminous screen. Incidentally, the artist often starts a new project with a digital sketch.
Danil Danilovsky’s solo exhibition at Erarta comprises artworks from two series that the artist refers to as ‘Quiet’ and ‘Cloudy.’ The first one embodies devotional awe inspired by nature – the ultimate reality that man cannot fully grasp. Powerless as we are to affect our surroundings, we can still contemplate this timeless mystery. The second series, featuring visions of vagabond clouds looming above the earth, encapsulates the idea of unhindered natural force. The artist believes that the opposite states of nature, its intermittent serenity and frenzy, reflect the essence of the world itself whose only well-known constant is change.
Danilovsky’s artworks present to the viewer the human inscape, mercurial and inconsistent as the very nature of our being. ‘For me, a painting is a way to express something you cannot hold within,’ comments the artist. ‘As long as it is sincere, it is bound to sync with someone else.’
Danil Danilovsky was born in Murmansk in 1986 and studied at the Moscow State Academic Art College in the Memory of 1905 between 2009 and 2014. In 2018, he received the Grand Prix of the 5th National Young Artists Competition The Muse Must Toil founded by the ARTMUZA Contemporary Art Museum. Actively exhibiting his works since 2014, to date Danilovsky has taken part in For One’s Friends, National Exhibition of Art College Students staged by the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMOMA) as part of the Young Itinerants project (2014), the 37th Young Talents Exhibition staged by the Moscow Branch of the Artists’ Union of Russia (2017), the annual Neo-Landscape genre-specific exhibition (ART Korobka Art Centre, Moscow, 2022), among other projects. Danil Danilovsky’s artworks are in private collections worldwide, including Russia, China, the US, the UK, France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, and Nepal.
