MYKOLA TOLMACHEV / SOLO SHOW / VERNISSAGE 15 avril

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Here is a series of 15 drawings where the fragility and disarray of a certain youth struck by a military invasion, with art and lyricism as their only weapons, shine through.
Already "in the soul of the young artist the interior conflict between the felt ideal and its materialization is intense". But this time the fear and anger have reached their paroxysm and are paralyzing, so Mykola must force himself to manipulate the tragic with his brush, all in lightness, at least in appearance. These drawings are the rescues from dozens of others compulsively destroyed by their author, because the distressed mind is in many ways self-destructive, in permanent struggle against the hand that persists in acting and drawing with patience and determination. Perfection, the purity of youth, even melancholy - themes so important to our artist - seem in these new drawings to be jeopardized by the absurdity of the world. The cursed beauty of his portraits is still present, but now their faces more often turn their backs to us. Also the skin of the dreamer is no longer porcelain and sensual as it used to be, it has been replaced by a cold pallor. The chromatic palette has indeed been reduced to green and red pigments. Today, Tolmachev's world is made up of rose petals nailed to the wall, moldy fruit in the shape of a moon, and small, persistent and almost imperceptible pains…
The softness of the watercolor spreading on a heavy and smooth paper perpetuates its vocation to attenuate the drama. It may be terror, but spring returns eternally.