Igor Melnikov: New Work

The Turner Carroll Gallery is thrilled to once again show Igor Melnikov in an upcoming solo exhibition this fall. Melnikov has rightfully achieved his reputation as a world-renowned painter by creating a body of work that pulls from memories, dreams and old photographs. He is widely considered a painter of childhood and explains his works simply as images of children’s souls that “chase” him, compelling him to create.

Raised in Russia, Melnikov opted against the career of the successful Soviet artist - University degree, Union membership, state sponsorship - and instead became known as a graphic designer and film maker. Until Perestroika he was a member of Russia's artistic underground, experimenting with abstraction and striving for ever-greater originality. His realization that neophilia was an empty philosophy allowed him to travel, in a spiral of creative development, from traditional forms of representation, through abstraction and conceptual art and back to representation. His figures owe their haunting beauty to this long process of discovery.

The up-coming exhibition will feature work that showcases Malnikov’s new exploration of color use. His move away from the more somber, Eastern European palette he used in past works not only more firmly categorizes his pieces as magical realism, but it also reflects his migration from Russia to the United States. As a student, Melnikov studied artists in black-and-white textbooks leaving him to imagine the palette of each piece. After moving to the United States and seeing the works in color, he became aware of the emotional importance of color in painting, an awareness that influences his newer pieces. 

For Melnikov the work has no relevance if analysis and logic are necessary to embrace and understand his paintings. The images must permeate that emotional core of our very being and transport the viewer to a place where logic cannot explain the experience before them.