Aleksey Dubinsky | Zoltar. Master of Fate

April 29 - June 12, 2023

“Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk. through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.”

Window Project presents Alexey Dubinsky's solo exhibition, "Zoltar. Master of Fate", which brings together variable-scaled canvases and monochromatic graphical sketches created for the project.

The title of the exhibition and the name of one of the works presented in the show are inspired by the feature film "BIG." However, unlike the film's character, the artist, in front of the "Master of Fate," "wished" a return to childhood, not only for himself but also for the viewers, who seems to find themselves in the "Big Little World." Anyone who has been a child remembers how different the perception of proportions and scale was in childhood. Likewise, Dubinsky's naive children-mannered artworks, with giant flowers and rainbows, birds, and fairytale-like characters, evoke memories of experiencing the world in childhood.

If one continues observing the exhibition, the perspective of large-scale compositions of the paintings will bring them back to the vision of an "adult." But still, the artworks lead to childhood experiences that will selectively remind viewers not of their full memory but of episodes, as it were, pre-selected by the artist. Silhouettes of a "Family Portrait" with a staged smile, behind which a portrait of the same family hangs on the "wall"; an "Old Book" where a large open book lies on the old man's lap, children in costumes, colorful and black-painted birds and plants fill the usual atmosphere of the room; a dramatic moment of death in the "Farewell" emphasizes a teenager utterly indifferent to this traumatizing event. The intensity of drama culminates in the "Zoltar. Master of Fate", which at first glimpse should reflect the joyful gathering of people in an amusement park. In a colorful composition, black characters ominously pursue children who’s sad and, at the same time, indifferent looks increase the sense of irritation.

The more one explores the works, despite the shared context, one notices the isolation of characters or groups of characters from each other. As if in a collage, characters from different times and spaces, from different realities, are collected. Viewers will find that the works evoke not so much their childhood memory as the memory of childhood photographs in a family album. One of Dubinsky's primary sources of inspiration is photography, old photos from the Internet, or personal albums of friends and family. The past and the reflection of the past in the present, presence- "being," and memory; counter-memory; private and public; signs and counter-signs are the issues that are actively present in Dubinsky's works. The artist, as it were, turns the "punctum"2 found in different photographs into one big picture, into one composition, as if everything is connected. However, at the same time, each of them exists independently, ignoring the other. On the clean white surface of the picture, the memory transforms into a counter-memory, imbued with signs of intensely private becoming a collective memory. The pieces of counter-memories evoke deliberately selected parts of memory in each viewer.

Thus, "Zoltar. Master of Fate" becomes a metaphor referring to such eternal issues as the duality of the world, the ephemeral nature of life, and the inevitability of death, and most importantly, it explores a human destiny, a fate of a hero on the journey, which the artist observes from the perspective of the most tender, vulnerable and sensitive - a child. The works combine desired future in the past, opposing the reality in its present, joy and sadness, drama and indifference in everyday life. The coexistence of opposites is also emphasized by color: colorful and black elements create unified compositions and, in large, the exposition. "There is no light without shadow," -says Jung. Indeed, the duality of the world is also reflected in the human, in every person. Going through the labyrinths of a collective shadow, in the duality of the macrocosm and microcosm, for the hero, "the meeting with oneself is, at first, the meeting with one's own shadow... "

Lela Grigalashvili, 2023