How scary it is to be serious

“Return” to the painting of Semyon Faibisovich in the Regina gallery

Since Semyon Faibisovich gave up painting in the long-ago, still far from stable year of 1995, he managed to write several books, was engaged in photography, but just did not make a movie. Over the years, the artist, the technique he uses, and the people he paints have changed. Only the themes remained the same: people (in the new paintings, mostly women) in a trolleybus, a minibus, at stops. The expectations of the public have changed, especially those who are willing to pay money, because, according to his own version, Faibisovich gave up painting not because the topics were exhausted - it seemed to him that no one needed his work. However, this “nobody” hardly means the general public (the artist’s works rarely reached them) or even buyers (who either appear in his life or disappear) - most likely, “nobody” includes a very narrow circle: first it was the turn of Faibisovich himself, tired of dealing with reality in such a labor-intensive, ponderous way, accumulating huge canvases in his apartment. And yet, being in demand, even if it doesn’t mean anything, explains a lot. Semyon Faibisovich has been returning to painting for the last year and a half in empty rooms - paintings have been dismantled, prices at auctions are rising, the heavyweight title of “the most expensive artist living in Russia” seems to oblige him.

But as it turned out, it does not oblige anyone to anything - the artist did not even intend to enter the same waters, to repeat successful things, to saturate a scarce market, to the delight of collectors. Of course, Faibisovich could have simply painted other pictures, but he would not have been himself if he had not angered the market, which requires understandable techniques and natural hand-made products. Mobile phones, Photoshop, canvas printing, raster images, which have almost become the main character of the paintings, are so confusing that their true handicraft is not immediately visible to everyone. Faibisovich hides behind photography, although previously it was difficult to classify him as a photorealist; I always wanted to carefully write that he “uses photography.” So now - I worked, of course, from photographs (ready to present the source material at any moment), but I so confused everyone with the description of the technology of transferring pictures onto canvases of different quality, with different degrees of processing, that people see the painting - and do not believe in her existence. The trick with a mobile phone, which at the slightest magnification splits reality into mosaic fragments, is unlikely to help explain what has always surprised him in his works: the haze, the longing for a better life and the feeling of living this one senselessly, a feeling of endless dull absurdity. And paradoxically, in the end, the affirmation of a miracle, a daily holiday and a natural harmony, not created by an artist, but seemingly accidentally snatched from life, spied upon. If there had been no mobile phone, Faibisovich would have come up with some other reason to deprive himself of the authorship of the overall composition, to distance himself from it as much as possible, because he himself, as a reasonable person, does not agree with this life in anything.

It doesn’t matter what kind of optics is causing this: personal or mobile, but the golden glow is gone, and a blue light has appeared, penetrating almost all the pictures. As before, the first impulse is irritation: the surrounding reality and its inharmonious faces, the peacock colors of clothes that have replaced the grayish soviet monotony. As before, the dull plot blossoms in the hands of Faibisovich, filled with depth and meaning, associations with old painting, and not only at the formal level. References to the Peredvizhniki, old Dutch, new Chinese, and recently departed socialist realism are abundantly scattered throughout all the paintings, but the artist goes further. From hints of an old-fashioned psychological portrait to a long-established, humanistic level considered almost indecent for a modern artist: human worlds appear in the paintings, illuminated by attention, empathy, understanding, and love for the random person they meet. Judging by the auction prices, this trend is again in price - only it is customary to show love to a person at a considerable distance, when he finally dies away along with the social system.

Lyrics have long been considered the lot of marginalized losers who tirelessly and stupidly sing Savrasov and Levitan. Even people with obvious lyrical talent put themselves under the gun of trends in their youth - so as not to be trampled. First, the official authorities, then the omnipotent discourse, forbid focusing on personal experiences, offer to somehow comply with the order of things, and Faibisovich stubbornly fights off attempts to bring at least some digestible theory under his work that will help put them into order. What seemed like a whim during perestroika has now become a right, especially since Erik Bulatov, Oleg Vasiliev, and Viktor Pivovarov are breaking out of this system in completely personal stories. Faibisovich, both before and now, both in his photographs, and in books, and in painting, is interested only in himself, and in reality - within purely personal limits. Every time he discovers in this territory something strange, amazing, defenseless against the onslaught of time and fashion, breaking through all intellectual filters and trends - man. And a mobile phone, like the foreign name of the exhibition - Come back, simply helps protect against grandiloquence.

Faina BALAKHOVSKAYA