Erik Bulatov

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Isolated from all Western art developments, Erik Bulatov has created an independent form of expression by subtly transforming the officially propagated Socialist Realism in style and content.

We have come to a watershed. After more than fifty years of social and cultural isolation, we have come to take our place on the scene of international culture. It would be foolish not to anticipate complex and significant problems. The most prominent, although to my mind it is not the most important among them, is the market. In the past, very few artists have been given the opportunity to show their work in official exhibitions, or to earn a living by painting. Most could only dream of it while plying some other trade for their bread…

"Painting is my fulcrum, I can turn the world around with it; painting is my interlocutor helping me find answers’, – Erik Bulatov says in the documentary film timed to his current retrospective exhibition ‘Here’."

The eye is drawn past the rooftops in the foreground to the blood-red horizon. Although the strobe light lures the viewer ahead, the artist has noted that this painting "deals with the past, not the future…