Dmitry Shorin at Erarta Galleries New York
NEW YORK: Erarta Galleries will present Dmitry Shorin’s latest exhibition Growing Wings on the Way Down, an exhibition that brings together his acclaimed paintings with an ambitious new sculptural project realised in collaboration with Erarta Galleries. The show consists of 10 large-scale paintings and one life-sized sculpture from the new I Believe in Angels series, recently unveiled worldwide in prestigious locations like the Venice Biennale, Art Paris and Art Palm Beach. Forming part of the permanent collections at the Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art and The State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, Shorin’s signature voyeur’s gaze now sees him expand his vision to include the third dimension.
The sculpture is part of the series from I Believe in Angels, Erarta’s latest joint project with the artist. According to Shorin, “Man has long coveted the ability to fly, but the faster and farther we travel, the more we must look to the angels for direction. Though ostensibly capable of high-speed travel, my angels are caught in a moment of daily routine – a contradiction.” Engaged in familiar everyday routines, Shorin’s subjects seem frozen in time. It seems that despite the speed of our technology, the physical burden of the heavy airplane wings has rendered these beings immobile. As human beings are thrust into ever more challenging situations, we are pushed to quickly adapt and survive, to grow wings on the way down. Shorin’s body of work captures this urgency, this superhuman ability to persevere and call on reserves we didn’t even know we had. His characters are modern day angels.
Shorin’s imagery, both sculptural and painterly, exists in the gap between a clear narrative image and the evocative sense of a half-remembered dream. His work seems to present the vestiges of aesthetic totems, assigning guardianship to womankind, and giving an angel her wings in the most modern sense. There is no sympathy or moral, rather the viewer is presented with a chance to ponder subjective reflections of fleeing from reality or engaging in reverie.
In exploring definitions of beauty and the transcendental power of the feminine, Shorin suggests that his angel’s wings are beneficial in navigating through today’s age where speed is more important than physical strength. The sculptures debate technological processes and the limits of the human body in a digital age. Shorin looks at contemporary society and revises clichéd standards in mythical terms.
