Bogatyrs

Three riders on a hill — Ilya, Dobrynya and Alyosha — have stood in the Tretyakov Gallery since 1898 and in every school textbook ever since. Vasnetsov painted them for almost twenty years; the result is not an illustration of an epic but the epic itself: an outpost no one will pass. The image is so well known that it is recognised by the silhouette of a single horse.

The series works with that silhouette. The textbook painting is scattered into cells and reassembled: Vasnetsov from afar, up close a mosaic of hundreds of squares of varying tone, on a black or a white field. Beside it another version: riders in the manner of Bilibin, with a flat shield and a red horse, built along the contour. And three black silhouettes of foot soldiers — the outpost reduced to a sign. Two ways to tell one epic: through a depth of colour and through a single line.

The cells are built in relief on artboard and painted by hand; in the Bilibin pieces there is a dense contour and gold leaf on shields and harness. Over it, epoxy resin, which gathers the mosaic into one plane. Every work exists in a numbered edition.

A series for a study, a library, a masculine living room, an office where the wall has to hold. The bogatyrs stand their ground — that is their main quality.