"Ablakaty Balalaikina" is a new exhibition project by the artistic sect "Sorcery Artists", also known as "Kolhui"
There are several literary allusions behind the mysterious exhibition title. Firstly, the reference to the advocate (ablakat) Balalaikin, a personage with a challenging fate from Saltykov-Shchedrin's "Contemporary Idyll", a “must read” play for anyone interested in "Russian question". Secondly, as it follows from the sect’s crowd funding video which helped to raise money for the exhibition, there is a link to V. Mayakovsky’s propaganda posters of satirical project "ROSTA Windows". And as always "Kolhui" castigate and criticize social and political shortcomings.
For certain reasons the art of poster has reduced from a bright and relevant art language to dusty museum exhibits. The uniqueness of the project is in the original idea to return topicality of poster genre not by rethinking and redrawing the old material as it is often offered by curators but by creating new contemporary content and new forms of expression, including posters-objects and video posters.
Each member of "Kolhui" develops his own original genre: fervent cartoon realism of Nikolai Kopeikin, evil characters of Andrei Kagadeev and morbid images of Kirill Miller. The newcomer of the sect, a great graphic artist Mikhail Gavrichkov, fights against war and foemen; Nikolai Vasilev, a genius of tape art, illustrates Kozma Prutkov’s aphorisms in collaboration with Andrei Kuzmin. The exhibition also features Alexei Uvarov’s monster posters, Vladimir Medvedev’s pacifist works, and works by such Moscow artists as Victor Puzo, Alexei Sergeev, Porphyry Fedorin and Vasya Lozhkin.