Rustam Mirzoyev
DON'T AWAKE THE DADDY
14.05 - 03.06.2010

Rustam Mirzoyev, a notable Ukrainian painter, is showing for the third time the project at the “Tsekh” gallery. At his previous "Tsekh" exhibitions Photogenic Painting (2006), Ukrainian Night (2008) and Black Dolls (2008) held in St.-Petersburg, he presented pictorial works, in which deceptively simple images have developed themes of hollowness, deanthropologization and antiglamour.

Rustam Mirzoyev's new picturesque cycle under the infantile name of “Don't Awake The Daddy” represents images with characters-toys simulating existence in a certain plane-and-streamlined world. Anthropomorphous and theroid, they are changing over through conditional geometrized or ornamental-and-flower desert, moving depthward or in parallel to the canvas plane, being stockstill in the centre. More often, the conditional space of their dwelling is confined to contraposition of the horizontal plane-"floor" and closing wall, creating in such a manner sensation of claustrophobic isolation. That is advanced also by that the absence of a colour in the black background, capable (as it is known from modernism experience) to display the space depth, loses this feature because of the ornamental or schematic images "littering" sight, transforming “the sky over horizon” into the impenetrable wall-background.

Undoubtedly, the characters have been copied from children's toys and desk figurines – naked dolls, bears, piglets, mickey mice, in which their initially handicraft character has been underlined. Roughness of connecting separate component details is revealed by the generalized painting; many creatures look having the dual nature – either the doll is copying a human being, or the human being has been designed as a doll.

The toy people in the toy space – that can be more harmless and lovely? However, it is worth looking closely at humanoidness of Mirzoyev's beings, their habits, mimicry, movements suspiciously similar to human ones. Then, you can discover that the world of the childhood limited to walls of a box for toys or children's room — that is the world of the adult life defined by conventions and closed and devoided of prospects too (by Mirzoyev – in a literal sense). This is the delocalized space where all reference points are confused, everything is a single substance of the deceptive show dependent on technologies. The technologies intended to give to a modern person sensation of freedom and width of the world, of which he is deprived in more and more controllable social medium, are finding their true appointment in the “Don't Awake The Daddy” cycle – i.e. to create only the screen prompts, incapable to reflect illusion of vital space.

Mirzoyev's horrible characters – creatures from the dreadful dreams, revived artificial human and animal similarities, are only illusive covers, nevertheless, not less dangerous in the dream realities. The dream generated by the technogenic globalized environment, where the reality is saturated with the infantile images naturalized from bright digital pictures, is a model of the present world in which a human being prefers self-deception, non-moving into adulthood, dependence - instead of independent making solutions.

The dolls are images of manipulation and uncertainty, embodying human phobias, first of all, fear of the future and absence of accurate internal reference points. In the Ukrainian realities, they acquire an additional value. Frightening uncertainty of the political future, threat of usurpation of the power by "the daddies" and refusal from the democratic development defines urgency of children's discourse in Rustam Mirzoyev's works.

Neither bright colours, nor lovely toy appearance of the heroes of the “Don't Awake The Daddy” cycle are not able to mislead, - on the contrary, they especially clearly reveal the voluntary masquerading the reality effected in the modern public consciousness.

Oksana Barshinova