The exhibition “Things are more pleasant” by Andrey Krasulin at pop/off/art gallery combines the artist’s masterpieces created over the past years. The show opens a series of artist’s museum projects scheduled this year at the State Tretyakov Gallery and at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art in 2021. The main idea of the exposition is to introduce the key visual artistic Krasulin’s principles, which do not fit into either the modernism paradigm or the conceptualism.

The core of the exhibition appeals to the series created during 2018-2019 where Krasulin analyzes a structure of a box. Examining its detailed structure and cutting off the nuances, he brings it to the stage of abstract symbolism. The artistic tactics is based on an apophatic method where definition is based on negation. The cycle will be completed with the two bronze geometrically abstract sculptures which are identically called “The Boxes”. Despite the formal education of the sculptor, Krasulin was not so much engaged in sculpture in its traditional sense but rather in experimental plastic solutions: in his hands wood acquires the qualities of parchment, cardboard is transformed into metal, and bronze becomes as fragile as paper.

The second part of the exposition is based on the new minimalistic paintings. Monochrome canvases which are animated by several lines, force the viewer to hypersensitive perception and immersion in the meditation process.

The quote from Josef Brodsky’s poem ‘Nature Morte’ (1971), chosen as a title for the exhibition, not only shows the idea of an exhibition, but also reveals the core of Krasulin’s poetics:

Things are more pleasant.

Their outsides are neither good nor evil.

And, if penetrated,

Nor are their insides good or evil

The ‘things’ for Krasulin (wooden and carton boxes, stools) are the basic elements for his art. Appealing to simple things in graphics, painting and sculpture, he shows both their essence and the material the object is made of.

Andrey Krasulin was born in 1934 in Moscow and spent his childhood in Pushkino (Moscow area). From 1953 to 1960 he studied at the Moscow Stroganov School of Art and Industrial Design, majoring in monumental and decorative sculpture. In soviet and post-soviet time Andrey took commissions from the state in collaboration with architects: bas-reliefs in theatre halls, sculptures in public places, and often memorials. These works were often abstract that was very atypical for that time. After the fall of Soviet Union, Krasulin got actively involved in different exhibitions– his solo exhibitions took place in different museums and galleries in Russia and Europe (in the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg in 1995 and 2005, in the State Tretyakov Gallery in 1997 and 2005, in Schusev State Museum of Architecture in 2008, in the Lietuvos Aido Gallery in Vilnius in 1995, in Neuentempel Galerie in Berlin in 1997). Today Andrey's works are in the collections of the State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow), the State Russian Museum (St. Petersburg, Russia), Ludwig Forum for International Art (Aachen, Germany), the Museum of Organic Culture (Kolomna, Russia) and in other museums and private collections all around the world. The artist is based in Moscow.

pop/off/art gallery was founded by the art historian and curator Sergey Popov in 2004 and for more than a decade now has held a leading position in the art world in the sphere of Russian and international Contemporary Art. Along with its commercial activities, the main priority for the Gallery is its active exhibition policy. Gallery regularly organises exhibitions of its artists in major Russian museums: the State Tretyakov Gallery, the Russian Museum, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art and others.