I met Andrei on 17 February 2022, at the opening of IMPRINT, a collective show curated by Domenico de Chirico for Sector1 Gallery in Bucharest and soon noticed his distinctive works, amongst a lot of others by many good artists. With a little help from a friend, we had there some lively conversation, which preceded this interview.
Sibi-Bogdan Teodorescu: Let's start where your adventure started. You can tell me whatever you like. It's always tempting to search how all of these artists you see on Instagram got there. What was their journey? There are a lot of very interesting new artists, some very present, others rather discreet. What is your story?
Andrei Pokrovskii: In terms of just drawing, everyone gives the same answer: I always drew, I started since I was a little child or I started since my very early childhood. I was always interested in following that but I didn't think about a career up until the high-school. That was the moment when I started thinking what I would like to do for most of my life. I always wanted to be an artist in a way or another and initially I aspired to become an illustrator. I love drawing and to me, illustration was all about drawing. I also had this idea that perhaps as an illustrator you make money more easily, which might be true. I went to Moscow's State University of Printing as it's called and there they have a faculty of graphical arts where you are taught illustration, like history, art illustration and many other subjects, both technical and theoretical. It was a pretty good education. I faced oil painting there for the first time; in the beginning I hated it for some reason, but over the years I grew to love it, then I started to be interested in it outside the classroom-taught parts, so to say, and do it more for myself. I didn't finish this University, which I left after three years out of six. You are supposed to stay there six years. I felt exhausted, but was still interested in illustration, so I moved to the British School of Art and Design, also in Moscow. It's a not a state university and it's classified as European education both in terms of approach and management. We had more freedom and there were really no subjects, we worked on different projects, and we were given the privilege of approaching them and at this point I was carrying the baggage of interest in painting which I acquired in my previous university; from time to time I tried to use it in my illustrations but it's very hard to do it because of time and technical constraints, many of them preventing me from working this way. During my three years, the time I spent there, I grew somewhat disenchanted in illustration overall. When I finished, I tried to work as an illustrator for a brief period of time, maybe for a half of year, I searched for a few commissions, I did some jobs, but at this point I began to hate that discipline, I was rather unhappy. For me it was not the right type of work, being quite the opposite of what I envisaged before going to university.
S-BT: What kind of illustration you were working on there and what sort of projects? When I get a call it's always children's books, comics, etc.
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AP: Yeah, there are many expressions in illustration, but most of the time you had to do advertising, one way or another, magazines, books, even animation, which goes under the same name, but for me, when I studied it in Moscow, it was mostly book illustration. I really enjoy the idea, most of the children' book can be interesting for some adults as well, including myself, but in Russia you have a very narrow definition of what this should look like. This area is in a sort of development, but I didn't really enjoy what I was expected to do, neither a more commercial illustration -it was exclusively commercial, and the money was pathetic, so I told myself if I have to stay without money then I would rather do what I love to do indeed, working on my own ideas.
S-BT: The idea of being free is so beautiful!
AP: This disenchantment with illustration pushed me to work on my own. I started painting, primarily painting, which I still do. When I first talked to you and your friend [Luca Popa] you told me there's a footprint of graphical arts like illustration -I don't really like to use this word, in terms of painting, but yeah, my work and my vocabulary still have a lot of graphics in the way I approach it. This is essentially how I started in the field of contemporary art I would say, or just painting at least. Then, I sort of continued to do more. By the time I showed up in Bucharest I started to move to sculpture like separate objects.
S-BT: I don't know how it is in Russia or other countries, but seems in Romania there is a hierarchy of art fields where painting is better than drawing, like they used to wrangle during the Renaissance about minor and major arts. Perhaps this is now obsolete, I don't know. Some techniques or arts could be more generous in terms of possibilities, but I think in what your work is concerned the cool thing is that you can mix those features that come together in a particular way. When you talked about books I noticed the thick relief you run to mount your wood board, I don't know if it's just an accident or you really thought about it. There are fine details too, that even an amateur could describe as graphic and you have also the volume of the objects and the painting itself. I like the way you mix these mediums.
AP: I treat painting as an object and I'd love it if it could be seen as such. I don't know where this connection comes from. Is it the books or illustration? I don't know. The images on the surface of the painting I can try to explain throughout my attraction to religious art, especially in certain aspects of sacred objects; I kind of like the feeling of the object as a magical item, an artifact that has a magical power, a connection to the divinity or a different world or whatever beyond. Once many artists used to handle these as artifacts (they were part of rituals and some of them were considered to have miraculous properties) like an icon, for example. I also love the idea that the artists did not consider themselves the authors of the work, as they were guided by God or by another superior energy, who helped them in their productions. I fancy the belief that the object is not just a picture and resonates with something changing the environment where it's eventually placed.
S-BT: I like it very much, I found this very captivating. I'm also coming from an orthodox country, and I am a bit familiar with the theology of icons. I also had the occasion to restore some very old and valuable religious frescoes in Romania. Some years ago I visited a few museums and churches in St. Petersburg and Novgorod, lucky enough to be very close to some great icons; I like this assumption because it relates to a general definition of any art object, a magical item you can touch, feel and see. In Western thinking we somewhat separate the image from its physicality, thus it turns out to be just a concept. I like the connection one can draw between the idea of a soul, regardless of religious dogma. In my opinion body and soul (if one agrees with it) are parts of the same whole and actually you can't separate them because they are constantly determining one another. In the same way, I can't really isolate concept from material dimension in a piece of art, even including conceptual art. When you are drawing or painting you use concepts in whatever way, it's almost naive to think otherwise. I also noticed you take some references from the early Renaissance, a solitary, austere background, architectural elements and geometric structures.
AP: I don't think I have works directly referencing that period in any specific artworks, but yes, I'm inspired by early Renaissance artists like Giotto and several other artists of his time, when they had just discovered perspective and made use of it, enjoying it very much and working with this box-like environment, framing some doll-characters inside. Well, I began to move a little bit at the moment. At first, it was easy for me to create a sense of presence and a sense of immersion. For me it was pretty much the point between an abstract work and a figurative one, but later I realized it's easier for me to start using this kind of mixed method. As I already said, I am slowly moving a bit from exploiting the perspective further on, shamelessly to new kinds of voices.
S-BT: You are a hard worker, aren't you? Do you have a routine, how do you make use of your time? Is it just inspiration? Whenever you feel you have to do something you simply take action...
AP: No, I don't really have a routine, my timetable is kinda messed up. Now I have my own studio, even though it's not entirely mine, and started to work there just two years ago or even one year and a half. Before that I used to work at home in a completely spontaneous way, but I wasn't very productive obviously and when I got a studio it completely changed the productivity, the environment and the flow of ideas because I realized it's better to work in specific spaces
for many reasons. Maybe now my productivity would be pretty much the same if I would move back home, but at that point it was a very necessary experience. I just go there
nearly every day, like five days a week, an ordinary working week, but I don't always schedule what to do, meaning specific things. Sometimes there are multiple works going on, I might write down some things to follow up; you see, recently when I started to work some wooden elements it required some organization in terms of basic stuff as buying materials, plywood to laser-cut etc., otherwise I rely mostly on the mood I'm in, if I'm not in the right mood, I might just leave the studio or just not go there. I'm yet to believe that this very tough school of thought is fruitful for work so I just follow the mood, as I said.
S-BT: I also wanted to ask you something about inspiration thought I admit it could be a bit stupid, even often vulgar in terms of "where do you get your inspiration from". People want to know what is behind that art, considering they are constantly fed with those holywoodian ideas where inspiration is rather supernatural. Maybe it just is, but not as in the movies. As an artist I also don't like this question very much, but I want to ask you this only from inside, artist to artist if you visualize the trajectory of your ideas, how does it work?
AP: I don't really know how it works, I don't have a recipe to get a constant flow of ideas. I might be in the camp of a Hollywood kind of inspiration. To me it really comes mostly unexpected, in various situations. So where does it come from? My idea is very simple, you consume a lot of information, then you get a lot of pressure, in the shape of thoughts, ideas grow inside your head, which at some point they come already formed. My best ideas appear in finished form, so I don't really have to sit down and develop something else, I can sit down and later go to work. It's not like I have a little piece of a puzzle and need to develop it for a long time. The best case is when it comes flashed out in a second. Doesn't happen always like that, of course, and I feel that sometimes I have a piece of idea, a piece of inspiration but it's really not enough to wrap up something. There are situations when I start to work with that little piece and I have to force it and of course, when you start to force it doesn't end up really great, but sometimes I have to do it because I don't want to go with this little part of idea after I started to invest in it. Nonetheless, eventually is in the aftermaths of what separates me from successful to unsuccessful results one can understand better the process. Sometimes I work completely spontaneously. When I first got the studio I took a panel for example and start working from zero with no idea. Initially I didn't know if it would work, because I restrain myself from developing the idea in a way to adjust it next or at least making sketches and refining them less spontaneously. I don't know if it's for the better but that's my general idea of inspiration right now.
SBT: I noticed you work rather small pieces. There are a lot of artists preferring very big paintings. What do you think about that? Big paintings could be very impressive and challenging, but they are also quite invasive. You could feel small in front of a very big painting, if not absorbed. On the other hand there are some other artists, like you who adopt somewhat small formats; is this a conscious choice or is it just because you are very meticulous and prefer details and very chiseled images?
AP: I guess the average size of my works it's a little bit bigger than you probably think. I don't know what is for you a big or a small picture. Most of what I did before I moved to my studio measured circa 40 or 30 cm and there were many reasons for that. I still come back to those dimensions from time to time maybe because it was a period of transition from illustration to painting and since illustrations have smaller formats and you always work on a smaller scale I couldn't feel very comfortable to jump to huge canvases right away. There was a technical reason too, because when I was at home I didn't have the opportunity to install giant size panels inside my living place so it was easier to store them, essentially. When I moved in the studio I continued to do small works, feeling stuck up by this for a while, but gradually I started to attack slightly bigger surfaces. Compared to many other painters my works are smaller in size indeed. I do come back to bigger formats from time to time I see. So far my biggest format was like 110 cm on 170 cm or something like that. OK, it's not that big in general, but for me it was the biggest and I made a huge effort of course, demanding a lot of time and a lot of energy to do. Seems to work with me because I like these experiences, it's way harder to transfer the idea on such large surfaces. That's the main reason I start small, but I constantly try to break the habit. Anyway, there are extra factors like considerable financial investment for big works: you have to buy huge panels, all the paint and the rest of all the materials. And it's also way too hard to sell these works because they are very expensive at the end and it's tough to find a good place for them, etc. There might be a psychological determinant as well: many of my works are related to space and to enclosed spaces, hints of the presence of another world and when you are making isolated places you decrease the size of the environment psychologically speaking, so it feels more intimate and smaller and safer in a way if it's not a vast one...
S-BT: But do you think big paintings could also be related to the ego, seeing many young artists wanting to get straight to the top. Now you can reach success at a very young age and if you compare masters like Gerhard Richter, who made his real debut in his forties, the image is clearer. Now he is 90 years old and is considered as one of the most appreciated and well-paid painters, but he made a lot of effort to become what he is. For a new young artist everything seems a lot easier. There are many cravings to show everything, whether it's art, flowers and dishes or parties, to explode and to be in the center of attention. What do you feel about that?
AP: I don't know, maybe you're right, I never made big works for the ego or because I was looking for a certain type success. In comparison to other art fields, it seems easier to make a big painting, you take a big brush and make a big picture. When they start their career, artists want to do big paintings not because of their ego but because they don't have other means to do something grandiose and painting allows you to do things like that I guess. It could be for the success, I don't deny this possibility.
Being so difficult to sell them, for me big paintings are just a tremendous effort, because you have to be up to it's a laborious process, and that's the big obstacle for me. I can't really tell, everybody has different approaches, for anyone other than myself.
SBT: I don't know if we can speak any more about dominant king-size shows, whether on painting or not, maybe these big shows are rather related to big names but in the Western Europe or USA you can still point out some massive shows, consuming a lot of resources. Perhaps not the pieces themselves, but the shows seem to be related more to entertainment. When I look at your work there’s nothing more different: it's very intimate, carefully mastered and really genuine. When the studios are big, the shows are big etc. I don't dislike extravaganzas, I used to love St. Petersburg a lot for its huge buildings and avenues when I visited it 10 years ago, yet I stay skeptical when it comes of huge art shows.
Now, let's talk a bit about the importance of the subject. How do you develop your subjects? You have the skills, you have also the experience, but when it comes to subject, this one really makes a difference. What's the place your subjects cover? Others struggle to achieve a certain vocabulary and set up a style. If you ask me, I don't like the idea of style itself that much, for its proximity to advertising. You are very recognizable when you have your own style, like many artists did, but when you have it, you can't really move outside its borders, because you want to be easily understood, recognizable in the eyes of professionals and ignorants both...
AP: Yes, style is quite ridiculous to me in general, I think it's a very poisonous idea being forced to produce your specific way of working and promoting it as a product, to make it recognizable. I consider it's ridiculous and stupid and very forced when you start with this principle. Anyway, style is, as you said, a voice, a language, specific characteristics which are typical for an artist, but I guess it comes from multiple factors and one of them could be how one prefers to work and organize themselves, their process etc. It may sound very banal. I was worried about style at some point, and I think now I have something which might be considered a style, but it came just from a few things I prefer to do in my work, which I feel comfortable about and some things I avoid. The way I work now comes from my temper, loving to have control over the general course of work, but I also like the freedom of gesture and movement inside the work, that's why I use a lot of these external elements. I build the environment by using them, additional shapes of architecture, this is how my language is born. Obviously there is a pressure from the style which comes after some time if you work, you need to find a comfortable way, just follow things you like. Also, I want to get to this: there is definitely a huge amount of images to look at today on Instagram or the Internet in general, and you see a lot of artists you like and you say to yourself "I wish I would do that or I'd like to do something like this" so you might start, unconsciously or not, imitating some elements. I guess it's necessary, it's good for your understanding and development and eventually you might like how something looks, but if the process is not enjoyable or you have to force yourself to achieve the results you expect, there has to be another way around.
S-BT: OK, I asked you first at the gallery about the heavy amount of images and information today. Maybe it's good to stay a while away from that, being a potential source of complexes and internal fights, but it works in the other direction as well, since you collect a lot of ideas and at a certain point you can't handle it anymore. I feel it, I don't know if you feel it too, there might be too much inspiration around.
AP: I suppose I really didn't get much inspiration from other artists, but I would say yes, definitely it's better to isolate yourself sometimes from this storm of images. I don't use other artists’ work as a source of inspiration, I don't use anything specifically, just doesn't work like that anymore for me. It's important to know you grab ideas from anything you engage with, outside the art field, or maybe primarily outside the arts. I don't struggle anymore to copy things I like from other people's work, now it's very easy for me not to look in other people's yard. In the last couple of years I haven't really had a big perspective on what's going on with other people's work in general. For me personally it's quite the opposite situation. When people are talking about something, I just like the knowledge and what the subject could be, for I haven't found these artists yet. There has to be a balance between what has been done and the present, taking distance from the noise and looking for other sources of new ideas. Apparently, for me the problem is the opposite.
S-BT: Do you have a circle of friends and artists that stimulates you to have discussions and exchanges about art or do you feel integrated in the milieu of artists and "relevant" people? When you open a book about the avant-garde for instance, you remember that big artists used to spend some time together, exchanged ideas or maybe even had a few frictions, do you have this kind of climate around you?
AP: Well, I don't have it, I'm absolutely isolated from this point view, I would say. I know a few artists but I don't really speak about art with anyone usually, either about the theory or the work's subjects. I might exchange a couple of words or compliments but regarding someone else's work or mine, I'm not really engaged in talking about it too much.To be honest, I'm not that much interested in other's people work, nor to be integrated in the environment at the moment. Turning the page, there's another side, more problematic; this environment is pretty necessary for an artistic career, where you have to be part of a circle of people to favor growing your network. That's a problem for me.
I recently went to the Baza school of contemporary art, here in Moscow. It's a fairly well known institution mainly for the the theory, not for its practical side. It's just to draw your ideas from the history of contemporary art and what's happening at the moment. I extended my horizons in terms of what people do and got to know people of this community a bit better. I would say so far I'm not enjoying it too much, but it comes mostly from the fact that I work from a very personal perspective, I don't specifically play with any global ideas, at least at this moment. I guess that's a really great problem, in circles like that they work upon these global ideas, I don't know why. It's either because they are very big, global and popular or because it's easier for people to attach themselves to such an issue than your own questioning. I don't say it in a discriminatory way, I'm just saying these are very different approaches and I don't feel very involved in most of the subjects people are intererested in. It's important, maybe my position is mostly wrong; one way or another conversation with people is fruitful, also it's a great source of ideas openly or unconsciously.That's something I try to work on. Roughly, it's a good thing to practice and to be involved.
S-BT: It's also time consuming, you have to meet people, you need more time for your work and it's frustrating when you want to go to the studio more. Nonetheless, you have to do it sometimes.
My last question would be how often you exhibit and how often do you sell? From this material point of view how are things going?
AP:
I'd say shows happen fairly frequently now. In my experience invitations also come in waves; there might be a calm period for quite a while and then you're getting multiple exhibition offers at once, so you're trying to figure out if you even have enough works for everyone. I'm turning too some of them down now, choosing more fitting ones.
It's similar with sales: nothing might happen for months and then many works sell one after another. When there's a show or a fair going on it helps a lot, obviously.
S-BT: You are very young, isn't it, you are 25 maybe?
S-BT: You are still at the beginning, hopefully you will soon know bigger success!
AP: I'm not really hunting for success [laughs].
S-BT: I understand, it's about the freedom of creating without concerns, material ones especially. Otherwise, it's not about the money, but if you don't have it from your work you have to do something extra and it's very difficult. You have to split yourself in two different individuals. I go through this myself teaching, which is quite tiring, playing this double role. At the same time, it's very satisfying because you meet young people and they have a lot of ideas and energy which I found very invigorating.
AP: You can steal some of their ideas before they...
S-BT: Ha ha, it's not my thing, maybe the other way round. What I take from my students is keeping contact with what's new, fearing becoming very conservative or staying stitched to my own thinking, this is indeed what I'm taking from my students. I also don't like to teach them things I know too well, not because I keep them for myself, but because I want them to be themselves. I think a good relationship between an artist and teacher is collaboration where the teacher helps the young artist to find him/ herself. This is my credo if I may say. I don't know if I have something else to ask you, maybe something very technical: I noticed you prepare your surfaces yourself. On one of your works exhibited in Bucharest you had two separate parts as two distinct sheets of paper jointly matched.
AP: I had two pieces of paper that were glued on the same panel. I work often on wooden panels and sometimes I use paper. I used to do it more often, but now I just employ single wooden panels, so I guess these layers you are talking about are a layer of plywood or maybe you saw the layer of gesso or something like that because I don't use paper anymore and I obviously don't stick multiple sheets of paper.
S-BT: I still think I saw something else than just a single surface. Maybe we should take a look on your Instagram account and find it.
AP: Yeah, this was the only work on paper in Bucharest. The paper wasn't big enough to come as one.
S-BT: When people go to the exhibitions they pay attention mainly to the subject or other elements they are familiar to, but I'm looking a lot at the frames, proportions of the pictures or other abstract details building a silent yet effective scenery. Going back to the past for example, the artists of the Renaissance preferred a horizontal format, while in the Baroque period they switched to a vertical one. I don't know if this was done on purpose, but it's similar to cinema. Some directors, they like a certain ratio. I was thinking about you and your preferences as well. Maybe you don't plan it, but when you start something you think about the proper way according to your ideas.
AP: Yes, correct. You find something that fits your idea. Occasionally in my mind I have a puzzled image and later I develop the idea or change it. I come to the shapes artificially, but sometimes I use spare panels. I had to use them in one way or another. In other cases you have specific formats and you have to do something within these limits. I don't remember if the work you were talking about was a similar case. Mostly if I have the resources and time, if there is no close deadline pressuring me, I just wait until the idea is complete and pick the best required format.
S-BT: We are now at the end of our conversation for which I most thank you! Your answers were insightful and very generous. Let's hope the horrible situation we are all witnesses to will stop sooner...
AP: it will be terrible!
S-BT: From this moment we will look at Russia differently. Let's hope for the best!
AP: Indeed. Thank you!
1st March 2022
@dronopofos
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