Evgeny Semyonov

semenov Evgeny Semyonov was born in July 1960 in Pervouralsk, Sverdlovsk region.
From 1973-78 he attended the MoscowAcademyArtCollege, then the CinemographicAcademy (directors’ faculty) during 1980-83.
After stints in New York and Vienna during the 1990s, Semyonov now lives and works in Moscow.

Living Mathematics

On one of Evgeny Semyonov’s paintings there is text explanation: “The revolutionary underground is forced to keep records and correspondence with friends in a way no one outside can understand”. It’s hard to resist the temptation to read this sentence as a program position of the author, but it is so general in nature that it applies to almost any artist. And if it is like that to Semyonov, it’s all the more that he pulled it out of oblivion, shook off the dust and exhibited it as his own work — without breaking the rules of post-modern citation.
The paradox is that, in spite of the fact that any work of fiction is coded messages, there are no similar universal codes. Each spectator is forced to seek his own code, as a product of not one but many codes.
Semyonov’s pictures are a nostalgic poem about loss of clarity on many levels. Artistic clarity — clarity and simplicity of composition, picture, color solutions. Ideological clarity — when the world seemed complicated but also foreseeable, measurable and understandable. Semyonov’s nostalgic works are lost images of our consciousness. Luckily or unluckily, the answer to this question is the same multiple as the possibility of multiple readings of a single picture.
Semyonov’s pictures are a nostalgic poem about loss of clarity on many levels. Artistic clarity — clarity and simplicity of composition, picture, color solutions. Ideological clarity — when the world seemed complicated but also foreseeable, measurable and understandable. Semyonov’s nostalgic works are lost images of our consciousness. Luckily or unluckily, the answer to this question is the same multiple as the possibility of multiple readings of a single picture.

Евгений Семенов. Из проекта Живая математика. 2008–2009. Холст, масло, акрил. Courtesy автор / Evgeny Semyonov. From the Living Mathematics project. 2008–2009. Oil and acrylic on canvas. Courtesy author