Vladimir Yankilevsky
From the Series The Divine Comedy
2014/2016
These works are part of one of the artist’s most recently initiated series, The Divine Comedy. In this series, characters from earlier works such as Masks, City, and Mutants are brought back to life in their distorted societal roles, accompanied by slogans echoing from the depths of historical memory – “Liberty!”, “Equality!”, and “Fraternity!”. They go about their everyday lives, some set against a cheerful, striped, coloured-pencil reality, while others exist beneath a sky filled with abstract symbols. “What seems alive and realistic – people in coats and suits – is, in my system, the most dead, because these people are unambiguous. In contrast, the painting behind them turns out to be alive. This is where the clash between the living and the dead, the current and the eternal, occurs.”1See: https://artinvestment.ru/invest/ideas/20100419__yankilevsky_interview.html.