The study of life in the apartment of a five-store building in the village of Elektroizolyator of Moscow region.
The people’s voices outside the window. The sounds of the engine warming up the car and the coming – leaving taxi. The crunch of ice on the pavement, children’s squeals on the playground, the light in the windows of the house opposite, the creak of the steps of the neighbours above, the crying baby next door, the footsteps on the stairs, the intercom, the cawing of crows under the balcony.
The settlement with external parties has become like a family and friends, similar to a small piece of the Okhta river in St. Petersburg, but still unfamiliar from the inside.
The years that I lived in a private house in the village, the former life on the seventh floor in a St. Petersburg apartment, and here on the second, shifted the body coordination system. Don’t leave the house and don’t open the windows, don’t call anyone – this was a principle of existence. I would have obtained or regained temporary seven-years accommodation in Tekstilschiki Area on the Graivoronovskiy street. The same ceilings, walls, floor, except that the bathroom is combined. And the kitchen is the same. But there I lived on the ground floor. And it turns out that life on the seventh floor of the five-store building is different from the life on the second floor, and the most interesting thing, that there is also a fundamental difference between the second and first floor.
I haven’t been outside in two months. Then the curtain was pulled back, and I realised that it’s already a winter. Eyes unaccustomed to the daylight, the feet didn’t «remember» how to walk on the ground, the look lost spatial thinking. Nothing to do with art. Bottles of whiskey, cans of Bonduel and bottles from the water. Yesterday I painted raw chicken wings and thighs. My previous exhibition was called “The one that will no longer be”. I had to say goodbye to the old favorite, archival works, that helped me to raise money for a living wage until spring. This works kept the time when I was apparently happy. Of course, they were not painted with joy, but they were a memory. Now I’m trying to lose my memory. Hopes exhausted to the bottom. Artistic search as a principle has finally exhausted itself. Feelings are atrophied, and, perhaps, you can find something in this atrophied feelings. There is, of course, not new, of course, not inspiration, but rather such a life after death, as were would this not sounded.
Stop thinking about how to make good art, stop thinking about how to make a good composition, distract from any thoughts!
In drawing, in painting, in the artist, and first of all, in myself the most disturbing moment is when the hand turns into a mechanical device such as a mixer, a hair dryer, a screwdriver, a drill. Fortunately, the hand gets tired, the back starts hurting, the coccyx becomes numb. When I worked with metal, my hand never was so hurted from bending iron, as now aching from painting.
I went to sleep only close to six in the morning. I didn’t wake up until half past three. There was dark outside at four o’clock. No appetite. I painted 180 paintings. I was going to draw two hundred more till March.
