Alexey Alpatov

Alexey Alpatov was born in 1968 in Moscow. He didn’t get professional artistic education, trained painting by himself. Nature and the city are the main characters in Alexey Alpatov’s paintings, thus is why his favorite genre is the landscape. Despite the fact that the works usually have the features of monochrome cold colors, this beautiful palette, filled the inner glow, forming his unique style. A separate chapter of Alexey Alpatov’s artworks goes with the sea theme, which the artist depicts in various states – from a serene calmness with moored boats on the coast to a night hurricane in the middle of the ocean. Alexey Alpatov’s painting is disciplined and precise with developed color technique, and it requires cultural reception adequate to the level of its expressive devices. The painting of Alpatov often imitates photographic visuality, more specifically the visuality of contemporary photography employing older methods, and this is especially apparent in the works executed in mixed technique. On a monitor some of his series seem like gum bichromate photography which imitates painting, the blue gray of some of his landscapes can be mistaken for cyanotype, and gray with a shade of gold — for platinotype. His virtuoso handling of material, the shining of canvas or cardboard through the painted surface problematize the media of contemporary figurative image. Alpatov depicts the most of the urban scenes from the perspective of a driver, not a pedestrian. This technique looks unusual, but it is an inevitable consequence of using the photograph as the background of the picture. The series «Full Headlights» is constructed on this principle. Night country roads, brightly and locally illuminated by car headlights, appear in the image of a mysterious reality, where you are always expected some tricks. The „Summertime” series looks almost photorealistic in contrast, although it is based on the image of a carefree American idyll: a nostalgic dream about the irrevocably departed past, which is gradually blurred in memory. As a result, there are only sketchy fragments that are partially reliable, but all the gaps are replaced by perfect pictures, which makes the embodied memories more like frames from non-existent, but such beautiful films. In his latest at the moment series „Empty Episode” Alpatov also started from the principle of photography. In front of the audience, it is no longer just urban landscapes, but missed scenes, which are usually added to films only to give a special atmosphere. They become a full-fledged statement for the artist. Now they are not empty timekeeping filling, but independent blocks, the main characters of the project. Alexey Alpatov currently lives and works in Moscow.