Andrei Pokrovskii - Sprout

RIBOT is pleased to present the first solo gallery exhibition of Andrei Pokrovskii (Moscow, 1996, lives and works in London), a choral and specially conceived project in which each work contributes to the delineation of a dimension hovering between nostalgia and dream. Sprout stems from a reflection on a recurring tradition in the ornamentation of many English churches. It is customary in those territories, especially in medieval-era buildings, to resort to the iconography of the so-called “green man” to adorne parts of space usually hidden under capitals, vaults, or column bases. This is a male figure adorned with foliage that emerges and is generated by his own eyes, nostrils and mouth. Often considered an artifact assimilated to paganism, the decorative motif has however also been traced back to the context of Christian mythology and the “Legend of the Rood.” According to this belief, the third son of Adam and Eve planted three seeds of the Tree of Life in the mouth of his deceased father. The wood from the trees that sprouted from his body, after many adventures, ended up being used for the construction of the Christian cross. The story of the seed continues somewhat in “The Dream of the Rood,” a medieval English poem in which the story of the crucifixion is told to a dreamer from the point of view of the cross in an attempt to animate a structural and architectural element. It is this translation of meaning, this passage that reconnects man, nature, and space that the artist investigates and with which his pictorial research is concerned. The exhibition proposes an idea of transformation and a blurred boundary between a character and an environment, where the story of a hybrid personification becomes the central motif. The trees and flowers, but also the very architecture and figures that characterize the paintings, already appear as part of a cycle of metamorphosis, evolution and return. There is no lack in this series of works of the use of wood, one of the recurring figures in Pokrovskii’s poetics, which in this context becomes an element with an almost metonymic function, but also a structural material that characterizes the installation. For Sprout, the artist has also created a special project in six different pieces, a series of works where the collage technique alternates with oil. The small papers render the image of a dreamlike world where the forms of nature and the geometries of architecture unexpectedly blend in and coexist.