Ural Federal University: Museum of Architecture and Design Opened Exhibition Dedicated to B. U. Kashkin
In the Museum of Architecture and Design of Ural State University of Architecture and Design opened the exhibition “Before my eyes the whole big world: punk-rock skomorok show B. U. У. Kashkin”. The exposition once again brings to mind the charismatic personality of Evgeny Malakhin, better known in Ekaterinburg as Old Man B. U. Kashkin, as well as the People’s Janitor of Russia, etc.
“The artifacts provided by the B.U. Kashkin Museum at Ural Federal University vividly characterize the unusual and absolutely non-canonical creative activity of the legendary photographer, poet, musician, punk skomorok, artist, and collector. For the first time in 14 years of the existence of the University Museum, his collection is shown in Ekaterinburg in such an extensive retrospective exhibition”, explains Tamara Galeyeva, the Head of the B. U. Kashkin Museum and Associate Professor at the Department of Art History and Museum Studies.
According to the art historian, the exhibition presents all the diversity and universalism of B. U. Kashkin’s artistic practices (except for the “miniature” painting of garages and fences). From early photographic experiments and “iconic reliefs” to samizdat books, assemblages, as well as “moral-chinking” and “congratulatory” plaques painted by his successors, members of the Kartinnik Society.
The exhibition opens with a section of portraits of E. Malakhin (Old Man Bukashkin), created in the 1970s-1990s by his friends from Odessa and Ekaterinburg artists (A. Lysyakov, E. Sholokhova, A. Lopato), forming a kind of “iconography” of the legendary citizen.
“A special tone of the exposition is set by the paintings of the Odessa neo-avant-garde artists of the 1970s-1990s, with whom Malakhin communicated extensively during his trips to the southern city. The plastic ideas and images of these now-recognized masters (Vladimir Tsyupko, Yuri Kovalenko, Oleg Voloshinov, Victor Marinyuk, Yevgeny Rakhmanin, Valentin Khrushch and others) are close to the naïve, but inventive compositions of the Ural author”, adds Tamara Galeyeva.