"Red Armchair" is Ilya Starichkov first solo show

Ilya Starichkov was born in 1982 in Elektrostal, an industrial city east of Moscow, to a family of labourers.

His grandfather was a professional photojournalist, however, he preferred to take artistic images rather than to accomplish his duty as a correspondent on the construction sites of his country.

In their humble apartment, there used to be a piano which aroused little Ilya’s curiosity. He spent long hours contemplating the black and white keys, from time to time pressing them with the hope of extracting a harmonious melody.

The musical instrument resisted to Ilya’s willpower but not the camera. His fascination to the black and white remained constant.

“My photographs are born under the pressure of ideas, that puncture my subconscious mind and demand to be put into effect. What I produce in the form of visual constructions, are foreign to the present time and space. They are incapable of existing in reality”.

Gifted with the purely Russian ability to create marvels out of nothing, Starichkov assembles commonplace elements that in a magical way reorganise space, bringing the spectator  toward other realities. Fabrics with floral motifs engage in dialogues with objects from daily life or with feminine figures.

The damaged flesh, blackened and mutilated becomes an object of admiration, an aesthetic delight. Starichkov, with a subtleness uncommon among Russians, juxtaposes, assembles, tinkers with ideas to produce images that are hard to define. They trick and surprise us. They mingle with the tacky, without becoming it.