Vyacheslav Chebotar
The Visionary’s Journey
Erarta Museum of Contemporary Art presents an exhibition by Vyacheslav Chebotar, an artist who views his practice as a kind of mission
-
14 sculptures exploring human passions, temptations, and visions
-
A chance to join the artist and his protagonists on the path of knowledge, discovering the true beauty of the world
-
An exhibition marking a milestone towards the realisation of the grandiose vision of a ‘Superpicture’
The modestly sized exhibition of sculptures offers a glimpse into the magnificent vision of an artist who has always treated his practice as a kind of mission. Vyacheslav Chebotar firmly believes that art must serve all mankind, and very few of those who have discovered a showy means of self-expression can be considered true artists. This claim, extremely unpopular in our days, contravenes the pervading trend of total creativity which shuns sophisticated and carefully planned finished artworks in favour of the mass-generated ‘content’ constantly flashing on screens and sinking into the void.
Vyacheslav Chebotar’s creative journey is that of an exemplary socially engaged artist taking an active part in his country’s civic life and embracing all challenges of his time. In the 1980s, he created a large-scale series of paintings celebrating the construction of the Baikal–Amur Mainline and worked on the East Siberian town planning projects. Roughly at the same time when he was painting the portraits of aspiring engineers and construction workers, Chebotar came up with the visionary concept of a ‘Superpicture’ (‘Sverkhkartina’). According to the artist’s concept, his ‘Superpicture’ is a genre-bending spatial composition amalgamating all academic disciplines: architecture, sculpture, painting, and education. Revisiting the scholastic model of Heaven and Hell poeticised by the great Dante in his Divine Comedy, the artist designed a grandiose structure taking the viewer on a journey of discovery. Meanwhile, The Visionary’s Journey exhibition is merely a station on the lengthy path toward Vyacheslav Chebotar’s ‘Superpicture.’ The artworks featured in the show seem to symbolise the living souls yearning for perfection and destined to a never-ending battle with their own sinful tendencies – a battle, come to think of it, with nature itself. Although most of the sculptures here are dedicated to human passions, an important thing to keep in mind is that a spiritual visionary who resists demonic temptations and sees the abominable nature of sin will experience the revelation of the world’s true beauty.
Painter, sculptor, architect, member of the Artists’ Union of Russia Vyacheslav Chebotar was born in 1959. Graduating from the Repin Institute for Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in 1983, he completed his postgraduate studies there in 1987. Years 1992 and 1996 saw the founding of his Sverkhkartina Artistic Endowment and the eponymous private art academy, respectively. Vyacheslav Chebotar was awarded the Lenin Komsomol Prize, the Gold Medal of the Academy of Arts of the USSR, the Royal Order of Cambodia, as well as other prestigious national and international prizes and awards. His artworks were exhibited at the State Tretyakov Gallery (1992), Peterburgskiy Khudozhnik (St. Petersburg Artist) Museum and Exhibitions Centre (2014), and featured in other solo and group shows at home and abroad, including Italy, Germany, Greece, and Israel. In 2018, a selection of the artist’s works was included in the State Catalogue of the Museum Collections of Russia. Chebotar’s artworks can be found in the collections of the State Russian Museum, State Hermitage Museum, State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg, National Pushkin Museum and National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg, as well as in Pio Clementino Museum in Vatican, Byzantine and Christian Museum in Athens, Greece, Museo Dante in Ravenna, Italy, and in other state and private collections the world over.
