Dear Shaded viewers,
Yesterday, I had the pleasure to attend the opening of Igor Chelkovski’s exhibition at Galerie Alina Pinsky in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris.
Born in 1937, Chelkovski is known for his sculptures, reliefs, and public artworks. His work draws on nature, humanity, and the city, universal and abstract themes. This exhibition is a retrospective of his work, bringing together the major cycles of his oeuvre from 1970 through the 2000s.
In his works, abstraction and minimalism merge. Inspired by reality, his sculptures emerge as ensembles of abstraction, which allowed him to become part of the Moscow circle of “non-conformist” artists. The use of wood as his material of choice became the starting point for the series that developed throughout his life. This choice of medium did not stem from an initial aesthetic decision, but rather from material shortages, which forced artists of the Soviet underground to use planks, plywood, fragments of furniture, and industrial enamel.
In his deliberately pared-down or angular works, Chelkovski strips away complex forms. Monochrome or painted with industrial enamel, his pieces demonstrate a singular approach to forms and textures, where wood becomes the equivalent of a line or a pictorial gesture. The reduction of concepts such as clouds or humans to extreme simplicity reveals his claimed inheritance from the avant-garde and Constructivism mouvement. One of the key principles of his artistic thinking lies in the invariance of forms regardless of scales. In some of his reliefs, the recurring return of the same motif stands out. Over the years, this repetition has become an essential aspect of Igor Chelkovski’s practice. The artist reiterates the image multiple times, simplifying it toward absolute clarity.
Chelkovski observes not the object “as it is,” but its appearance in consciousness through light, mood, movement, color vibrations, and spatial sensations, enclosing this perception within elementary forms, guided by the resistance of wood.
You can visit the exhibition “Drawings in the Air” from February 14 to April 11, 2026, at Galerie Alina Pinsky, located at 11 rue Pastourelle in the 3rd arrondissement of Paris.
Later,
Alex.
