Kondakov Alexey

Featuring original artwork: Abbott Handerson Thayer, “Diana”

Artworks are stories, situations that should be captured and outlined by the artist, carved out from the everyday routine, caught by Kondakov’s mobile phone camera. Of course, the key method is creating the contrast between the extremely “high” classics and ultra “low” contemporary daily life. The art of the past turns into an optical instrument that gives us a glimpse of the ancient times through the keyhole, and at the same time

allows us to dissect modernity. Connecting romanticism and postpost-here-and-now, Kondakov is weaving a unique surrealistic spacetime, where gods and mythological creatures turn into ordinary people, whereas a contemporary, like in the enchanted circle of ceaseless metamorphosis, recreates in his or her life patterns of eternal stories and legends. It is the harsh realities of the myth, the sublime trash of everyday life.

From this contradiction and amalgamation emerges Kondakov’s documentary surrealism. He sees only one place where his characters can hide, the only hideaway, the Internet. It is a magical place where you can protect your information in a way that makes it available to everyone. It is a network as a territory of eternal life and freedom. For Kondakov, eventually, highbrow narratives of art spaces are less meaningful than the “galleries”, or chronicles, of the ordinary social networks dwellers, who feel a special connection with his gods and other characters.

He is just a artist who invents his miraculous world by combining elements, by establishing rules for his characters’ life and development… By creating the circles of metamorphosis on the surface of still waters of the Art History lake… By looking for an answer to the question of how it is possible to keep telling stories in the world where everything has already happened, everything has already been experienced and told.