Artist Statement
This interview with Pavel Kir was taken by Sandro Botticelli in June, 2024
Sandro Botticelli: When did you begin drawing?
Pavel Kir: I can’t remember.
SB: And why?
PK: I have no answer.
SB: What are your artworks about?
PK: About my artworks
SB: Let me rephrase my question. You are presenting 4 series of artworks: The Dark Ones, Pandemonium, La Mujer and The Places. According to what principle are your artworks clustered into those 4 groups? How do they align into a series? Why did you arrange them like that?
PK: Well, first and foremost, I did it to ease the toil of the beholder — there are some cues in this distribution into four groups; it intimates about what is or was important for the artist — what game with the world and himself the artist’s Subconscious is playing and where, in the long run, it’s trying to bring him to. Though I’m not quite sure about the latter.
As for myself, The Dark Ones are telling me that the Dark has its presence in everyone, and that it keeps in touch with us.
One can try to hide away, — or one can open up to it. But it’s no good seeking any morale in that. It’s not in there.
The Pandemonium is about something that I recently lived through. It’s about how to keep your mind when there are all kinds of prerequisites for losing it.
La Mujer is an eminent part of the worldview for the mankind on the whole and for me in particular. I’m really fascinated and intrigued by that — have been for a long time.
The Places — I myself can’t figure out what it is about. May be, it’s about the Beauty of this world — once lost and then found again. Or, maybe, it’s about Immanuel Kant, who, as they say, never left his native Kaliningrad, but understood more than others. In any case, it’s my search for the Beauty that is not within myself.
SB: Not clear to me.
PK: Neither to me.
SB: What inspires you?
PK: Things Living and Dead. The desire to antithesize something to This Bloody World.
SB: What statement would you like to make about yourself?
PK: Love is worth it.
SB: Can you tell me about the artists who inspired you for making art?
PK: Can only make some guesses.
Klimt, his illness, ornamentalism, secessionism on the whole;
Chubarov with his attitude to the people in general and artists in particular;
the dissentient agent Pelevin, among others, because he wouldn’t show up;
the innocently murdered by the bloodthirsty regime Daniel Harms — because he shone more light into the dark corners of my Subconscious, putting the finishing touch to the language in which I think — it’s about his youth diary where he shares how he suffers because his beloved girl wouldn’t show enough respect to his virile member;
Sorrentino confused me;
Andryusha Mikhailenko — his youth collages never leave my memory;
Parajanov — all things at once, — a Great Hero almost unnoticed by his time and people, with his incredible unwavering spirit, his mockery of the pygmies of soul who surrounded and tortured him, his series of artworks on Biblical subjects carved on kefir bottle caps that he created when at prison;
Warhol, very funny — as he is very much unlike me, but he lives within me;
Prigov — as he continued Harms; as in the context of standing in waiting lines and living in a communalka (communal flat) he added some sharpness and sensitivity to my tongue and eye;
Beardsley with his art of the Line, as well as Durer.
Listing them all can drive one crazy. They live in me. And create.
SB: Why do you want to declare yourself to the world?
PK: I don’t. I just can’t keep it all inside any more. Let it live beyond me.
SB: Do you want to say anything to me?
PK: I do. Your Primavera came ahead of its time by at least 500 years. But then, I’m sorry to say, it fell into commonplaceness, platitude and even comics. And also — Thank you for taking an interest.
