Evgeny Dedov
Companion
16+
The Triangle Gallery of Contemporary Art is proud to present a new solo exhibition of the artist Evgeny Dedov, titled ‘Companion’.
The exhibition includes new figurative works, in which the artist studies various approaches to the art of painting, alongside a range of sketches of initial explorations.
A piece of bed linen is draped across the body in a representative depiction. Portraits of unnamed models are sketched on colourful canvases. These suggest a frantic approach to studying the subject’s face, as a daily practice in the art of drawing.
The material’s folds seduce with their obsessively repetitive structure, flirting with their form, creating a fantastical and fragmented landscape, resembling an island. The artist has abstracted away any specific features, leaving the viewer without their usual and comforting expectations being met. Dedov’s works, rather, suggest a wholly different experience. They are disconnected from the viewer’s perspective, they do not logically constitute an entire image, but rather the meaning remains enigmatic as the viewer tries to understand and interpret the logic behind them.
The titular ‘Companion’, according to Dedov, refers to ’the person or people I have been drawing for a long time, though I have never talked in depth with my subjects. Yet without them there would be no drawing, and then no painting either. Each drawing is a representation of a real life model, made at the academy in Vienna or elsewhere as part of my study.’
‘The inspiration for these works is always a real person, or rather, a real body. The body is like a companion to me and my study. And yet it is always something abstract. The subject of the portrait remains unknown, and as to what the portraits hint at, the artist says, ‘I am interested in how with a first glance certain impressions are imposed on us, what can be done with such audacity, and how the depiction of the body remains one of the most compelling challenges of visual representation’.
Companion assembles a number of isolated pieces, generating a connection between them. The exhibition seeks to challenge and break with traditional installations, to encourage greater interaction. Dedov’s works transcend the real life experience of looking and perceiving, emulating hallucinations and dreams. Dedov creates his own new and unique language of painting, indifferent to widespread preconceptions.
Evgeny Dedov was born on the 9th January 1987 in Leningrad. He studied at the Saint Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design and is currently a student of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Dedov debuted his work with a solo exhibition at the Centre of Contemporary Art - Winzavod’s ‘START’ platform of young art. The artist’s work has been since exhibited at Gallery Globus and at the Sergei Kuryokhin Centre for Contemporary Art in Saint Petersburg, and at Pechersky Gallery and GMG Gallery in Moscow. Dedov participated as a member of the parallel programme of Manifesto-10 and at the 4th Moscow Biennale.
Open Studios
Free of Charge 