Museum of Modern Fine Art to Exhibit Paintings by Mikhail Shikau

On July 22, 2014, a personal exhibition of paintings by Mikhail Shikau entitled Sady (Gardens) will open at the Museum of Modern Fine Art located at 47, Nezavisimosti Avenue, Minsk, Belarus. 

The exhibition presents a new line of creative works by Mikhail Shikau because the artist is mostly famous as the architect of the Belarusian pavilion at the 54thbiennale of modern arts in Venice, Italy held in 2011. In April 2014, Shikau was the architect of the exhibition of modern arts Avant-gARTe. From the Square to the Object organized in Minsk, Belarus.     

Shikau commented: “This exhibition is a fixation of personal visual associations and speculations about the miracle and paradoxes of the Venetian biennale.  The Venetian patterns unify natural transparency and human visuality. They are another search for a traditional cultural sense and a personal theater of renovations of modern fine arts.  It is an eternal exploration of the purpose:  an Artist and a Model or an Artist-Model?”

Mikhail’s paintings are minimalistic. Shining with an unearthly glow, their style is reminiscent of the experiments of Belarusian painters of the 1980s-1990s. Occasionally, realistic items in the pictures are quite personal, while others present frozen emotions of statues and zoomorphic images. The subjects and manner indicate that Shikau is an artist with a refined but critical view of the world.  

The artworks by Shikau appeal to sensory perception. They make one feel not a materialistic consumer of information, but a mysteriously reasonable and unique aesthete and philosopher, and maybe even give an insight into the ether of consciousness.

 The exhibition will be open until August 23, 2014