“To a certain degree, Sotnikov’s deeply mysterious works, which are charged by a multitude of clues and references, are never fully accessible. The spectrum of media used by the artist ranges from multilayered narrative scenarios on canvas to three-dimensional assemblages consisting of objects found at flea and antique markets. In the past years, Sotnikov has extended the span of his work, creating sculptures of wood and plaster as well as carved reliefs. Thematically, since 2012, he has become increasingly concerned with still lives, portraits, and theatrical paintings, in which the genres are conjoined, and still life representations and densely populated spectacles are interconnected in epoch-spanning conjunctions.
The grotesque, late medieval visions of hell by Hieronymus Bosch (from c. 1450—1516) are a constant in Sotnikov’s work. […] The different times, contexts, and registers located between ‘high’ and ‘low’, yesterday and today, are conflated into a surreal, phantasmagorical simultaneity of events, which in Boschian potentiation assails the viewer’s eye with the visual impact of an animated multi-media curio cabinet. […] The figures which in Sotnikov’s world-encompassing theater of passions are constantly on the road with unknown destinations in riotous carnival parades and wild processions seem to have nothing left to lose, but much to gain.”
Belinda Grace Gardner
The catalogue was published for the exhibition “Konstantin Sotnikov: Paintings and Sculptures” at ZOTT Artspace Singapore.
