An author is creating a kind of encyclopedia of love, where he deciphers the code, which many artists tried to break over centuries. His artworks are not reminiscences. Anikonov detaches from the classic iconography of the plot, and removes the mythological attributes — only a woman, color, light ... and him, whose invisible presence is felt in each painting.
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| 1. Eve 2006 year. | 2. Adam, 2006 year. |
We cannot see the faces of neither Adam nor Eve — what do they express? Is it anxiety or curiosity; are they ready to meekly accept what awaits ahead? Calmly and patiently, they stare into the future, which is yet indiscernible, making us anxiously wonder about our own grip on life. Is Love the Life itself?
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| 3. Danae, 2010 year. |
Danae is not perceived without the miraculous conception of the golden rain, which is associated with gold coins in the works of masters of the Renaissance that gave the subject obsessive ambiguity about venality of love.
Only the wonderful shine of light highlights the body with iridescent tones of ivory, which dissolves in it, full of heavenly bliss ... Immediate and unique effects of the light, appearing out of nowhere and caressing the body, wraps it with warm and translucent shadows. Facial expressions, every gesture, and every movement of the light-emitting body suggests an invisible man. A woman awaits only for him, she belongs only to him ... Is Love the Light itself?
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| 4-5. Diptych Nameless Time, 2007 year. | |
Our life is a desperate effort to control time, to be busy; to be confident that time is not lost. We try to live in the moment, which is slipping away. Is Love a moment?
Stratification, ambiguity, and polyphonic silence create a feeling of motion similar to either that of a second hand of the watch or to that of sand that slowly moves in the hourglass. This is how an eternity sounds like...
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Salome doesn't know what neither a flaw is or a virtue. Salome exists outside of normatives — she is immersed by the destroying power of passion. The taste of love for her is a taste of death. Is Love the Death itself? The image emerges as if an ancient Fresca from under the layers of plaster and paint, revealing a shape that is so bright in expression that it attracts and repulses us at the same time. |
| 6. Salome. DE PROFUNDIS. 2010 year. | |
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| 7. Diptych Spring. Spring I, 2010 year. | 8. Diptych Spring. Spring Zero, 2010 year. |
What superhuman strength and how much suffering and torment forced a body of a man or a woman to shrink and stiffen so unnaturally like a spring? Solitude together or inability to exist without each other, him and her are full of contradictions and tears, never in the presence of peace or tranquility. As if driven out of paradise ... Is Love the Pain itself?
