“Crackpots” by Alexander Tokarev

Ivan Bukovski and Alexander Tokarev are contemporaries . Up to now they have known each other only through the internet. Before either of them found his own artistic language, they both made the long journey from the traditional academic arts to the alternative byways of non-conformity. Both were drawn to large-scale works . However, their positions are quite different.

Alexander Tokarev thinks that, although life is tragic, one need not say so outright.

That should stay somewhere deep inside the painting, while on the surface everything should look like one endless holiday. The latest polyptych of the artist named ”Crackpots” (Mishuginneh Kopf), consists of five paintings and is dedicated to people, but people not of this world, carried away by their insane ideas; the polyptych is dedicated to Genius. It is the world of childhood and music, of dreams that never came true…

Alexander: “In fact each and every one of us – no matter how much we try to hide it – remains a child even into old age, trying to overcome some complexes and traumas, continuing to play children's games. That is why I play in this theatre too – by creating it on my canvas. My theatre is a theatre of metaphors”.

The same goes for Ivan Bukovski. His art is metaphorical and also a theatre, but it is a theatre where mysteries are performed. There are many biblical characters in his art, and they experience all kinds of metamorphoses, and within those metamorphoses their images become unreal, and the contours of their bodies get blurred. Disharmony, dissociation and violence – this is how our world looks today. There is neither consolation nor hope for a happy end in his paintings. All the same, they are truthful, and one feels great power and force in them of an elemental sort.

Lyudmila Solnyshkina, Michael Levin,
TV Channel „KULTURA“
Moscow, 2004