LE Heretic
Le Heretic - L'Enfant terrrible of the Russian contemporary art whose specialty are provocative subjects matters. It was only a matter of time that they drove him underground in his native country to avoid prosecution. This conceptual, visual and performance artist is not afraid to stir his native artistic waters or the public debate. Nothing seems to be sacred to this multi-talented visual artist who has made his mark in every artistic medium - digital art, painting, or sculpture.
Le Heretic’s art can be defined as contemporary commentary of a precocious artist that combines edgy millennial social awareness with pop-cultural esthetics both rooted in profound understanding of and appreciation of history in general, and art history in particular. Throughout his career he has toyed with esthetics of every popular artistic movement exposing and juxtaposing its core principles with contemporary artistic reality.
Using a unique mix of digital and classic painterly techniques to portray highly charged taboos, he emerged on the art scene in 2010. Inspired by Russian orthodox icons and Old Masters' paintings he creates seemingly devotional provocative images. His art exposes such issues as social injustice, the militarization of politics, the global triumph of imperialism, the dehumanization and deterioration of culture and its regress in light of unstoppable technological development. Le Heretic in his own words:“The whole history of art should be known and inspiring for an artist if he wants to build a new fragment of art history. So for the last seven years I assiduously continued my studies of the history and philosophy of the arts and it took almost a decade for my works being what I would call “satisfactory.” During my studies my perception of reality changed dramatically several times, which is reflected in my early work. My current state of mind: Art is manifested through the ideas of compassion, the rest is decorative art and design.
As for aesthetics, I am fascinated by renaissance, mannerism and baroque. Works of Mantegna, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Bronzino, Rubens and some other Old masters, are to me the height of perfection. And I'm not very impressed by contemporary art. I see the degradation in mastery, “shallowing” of meaning and extinction of aesthetic. We definitely need a new renaissance to stop dehumanisation and it must be digital. That’s why I do digital art.
When I started my artistic career, I tried to express my thoughts in different ways: photography, oil, acrylic, but in the end I stopped at digital painting with acrylic or resin finishing of prints. I don’t produce paper prints - the usual medium for digital painting. The surface is very important for my type of image, so I make a complex handcrafted finish for each work.
As for the philosophy of my painting, I can describe it in this way:
The meaning of the work is manifested in the process of separating the idea from the means of its expression. My means of expression is basically to compose and combine in addition to traditional painting techniques. I combine many pieces of famous works of art in my canvases and bring them together by painting over. But leave them still recognizable. I use contemporary cultural signs and symbols; In terms of my preferred medium - I mix photography and graphics so mixed media is my main creative method.
Thus, inside the picture, images interacting with other images, give rise to new meanings and the attentive viewer becomes a co-author in this process. I prefer to make content provocative and confusing at first sight. This should attract the viewer on an emotional level. And if attention is drawn, it’s the turn to get on analytical level and unpack metaphors and allegories. Which tend to be unpleasant and rude but mostly satirical.
I am convinced that cutting edge art will overcome the automatism of our perception and will radically violate our expectations regarding art. And the goal is to shake up the consciousness of the viewer while ensuring its effect is actually a success, not in a commercial, but in an artistic sense.
Le Heretic was born in 1974; he lives and works in Moscow.
MEDIA:
Di Sana e Robusta Constituzione, August, 2019, Vogue, Italia
Icon, Singapore, November 2018
The Portrait Issue, Digital Camera World, issue 47, February, 2015
Beautifulbizzare Magazine, December 2019, Number 1 Instagram Post, Le Heretic
Aesthetica Magazine