Ivan Loubennikov appears as the unique pioneer of a ‘new Renaissance’ against being hurled of modernity, postmodernity and whatever movements are in contradictions between them and the ‘traditional’ that hasn’t got a direction and is trancient usually. In the Renaissance which is imagined by him the ‘reborned’ is not merely the aesthetic-artistic heritage of antiquity, at the same time, the old christian religious icons too that with them the first Renaissance was in conflict. However, as Loubennikov states the 20th century “went towards new vehicles and new sociality searchings.” That’s not a trend can be overcome and can be prevented by singular resistances. Hence, as he knows will lose, Loubennikov resists quixoticaly with his uncovered figurative paintings in an effective way and in his noble dignity to consumer society today’s equivalent of the common religious-aesthetic language the first Renaissance opposed to and today’s world of meaning which is constructed through the mass media. While the ‘market’ and its demands to digestive objects/images take the place of the past religious authorithy’s artistic demands, the painter who gives back the lost halo to what are simple, real and ordinary blows wind of poetry which is as simple as that can make men’s flesh creep, to audience who lost their sensitivity in the age of flowing and glistening phantoms. Just this is the point where being pioneer and being loser begin.


L'Eau de Citron, 2004

Reduction of Ivan Loubennikov’s succes only to his resistance that has been fed by strong traditions against dominant tendencies of the age should be to take his work, which is open to be read in plural stratums, only in one aspect and this mistake might detain us from perception of the artist’s rich pictorial style that has all signs of an aesthetic genius. Loubennikov’s light and shadow games we can see in his all paintings without any exceptions, virtually pause time, stop motion and emphasize colours in their naked values; the rhythm sense based on repeating themes connected with espace and all compositions; his tonalité as his own innovation that makes figurative expression power arrived in a simple, soft and at the same time sharp level on which comprehension power of reason to be forced very much and as the last, the divine balance illuminates all the things by its theatrical banquet light... This is just the new Renaissance itself, actually, in 1990s the painter expected that it may be borned as a general and enthusiastic movement however never has become a reality, but now it’s crystalized in the perfect depths of his art’s microcosmos. His losing comes from his solitude. Otherwise, this is a revolution, in contradiction with the etymological meaning of the word, for art world what he success if we take it alone.


Francesca, 2004

When we talk about repetitions in his art Loubennikov’s ‘women’ are first remembered. Sad, impudent, timid, confused, stupid, innocent, sinful, restful, unhappy, hopeful women; always naked, usually motherlike, even in the most sinful position away from to be lustful... Daily objects (fruits, glasses, plates, bottles, loaves, cages, clothes, etc.) he compose with his women can’t be renounced also. As for mirrors they have a completely different sense for the painter. The mirrors of Loubennikov who likes to be interested in psychological associations as well as he is interested in historical and mythological subjects, discuss as parody identity matters, situations of being woman and being man. Who looks at mirror, appears in mirror, passes into other-space of mirror and comes from there is always woman. Even, in one of his pieces, he makes the matter reached to the apex where we see a mirror figure on a table. It’s strange that the original of the female face reflects in the mirror doesn’t appear. If we look more carefully then we’ll see that the eyes of the woman directly look into our eyes. Not only the painted one, in this example, also who watches and who paints becomes woman. Undoubtedly we’re face to face a completely personal obsession we can comprehend its solution clues after to be understood Loubennikov’s life, art and philosophy better.

Sea accompany to woman image in many Loubennikov paintings as a Freudian reference. On the one hand it may be related to Siberian fisher life the painter never got out till his 14 years old, on the other hand sea is womb of mother in psychoanalysis. It may even be that his expression in the Nostalgia, one of his mosterpieces very definetely, is the most proper example where we can perceive this fiction perfectly. There the woman, who has a mother image that gives peace and restfulness and whose one hand is on her cheek, although is naked doesn’t look in an erotic way. The sea background view may be related with womb of mother that is left in a very far past. However, in this ‘reading method’ what we look at is that an impossible target. A past never one can turn back, left it eternaly, no light illuminate it in any rooms of our memories... If we psychoanalyze like that, the ‘being rejected’ feeling is given by the unconcernedness with the posture of woman, her looking at another side a very far point from the position of viewer completes our ‘Oedipal’ speculation. I suppose, what is that gives viewers an uncomfortable admiration sense is that this covered references.


Nostalgie, 2002

Loubennikov’s works are figurative but they’re absolutely not ‘realistic’ with the vulgar meaning of word. He has been realy far from ‘socialist realism’ that was Soviet ideology at one time, in spite of that he was the vice presedent of the Union of Painters one of the official organisation in socialist period. He has created an original universe to himself like all real artists. When he goes towards some subjects from mythology, history, religions or daily lives the aim of his artistic production process is to pull away these elements from their contexts, to make them dislocated from their sources (deterritorialisation) and to create half closed texts share the same atmosphere with his other works. It’s not so possible that to define him in any kind of state of belonging. With his own expression he is Russian in Europe, European in Russia. He has created a rather stable and lyrical pictorial language in an unstable and uncertain position. He’s not a man of today, but we can’t say that he’s man of either yesterday or another age. It seems like that he established his own time perception in ‘timelessness’. He makes an irony in a little childish, oneiric, sometimes mystical, always lyrical kidding way and style about the materials offered by the Scriptures, history of the East and the West, especially Ancient Greece and dreamlike life of Siberia on wich neither bureaucratic state organisations nor global capitalist processes dominated completely. This playfulness, which gives a taste that is like what we have when read stories of Borges, doesn’t make the sincere attractiveness of Loubennikov’s art lost anything. If that’s so, then why irony? Loubennikov gives the answer himself: “If you don’t look at the world through irony then you may fall into madness.” Goya had said, “sleeping of reason borns monsters.” Today we are face to face some social, political problems created by extreme wakefulness and universal hegemony of reason and global rationality, and these problems are going beyond the images of past monsters now. In our world mechanized and left into hands of elecronic brains in a large proportion, Loubennikov’s painting resembles early borned angelic heaven views.