NIKOLAI KABANIAEV
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
I was born in Russia, in 1963, in a provincial town called Saratov. My father died one month before my birth and my mother struggled to raise her three boys. We lived in a tiny dormitory room of a local theatre where my mother worked as a make up and wig artist. Our dormitory was filled with actors, opera singers, ballet dancers and musicians who constantly practiced their arias and ballet steps in the shared kitchen and bathroom and in a long dark corridor. My early childhood passed back stage at the theatre, where all my wacky roommates were transformed, with the help of my mother, into exotic creatures, heroes, swans and witches.
More than anything else in the entire world I loved to dream. My dreams were provoked by the magic of the performances, the bright stage lights, the smell of make up and powder, fantastic costumes and scenery. When the show was over on the stage it continued in my head. I wanted to capture somehow that magical world which took me away from my family's miserable existence. I did not want to belong to reality, I wanted to be in my dream... then I started to paint, then I started to dance.
Being a dancer most of my life has opened for me a unique insight into human angst, a constant striving for perfection, and an eternal quest for self-expression. The human body, the finest product of nature, is used by a dancer as a tool to break out from the "prison" of ordinary. One single step from the theatre wing onto the stage represents the transformation from reality into a dream. Art for me is when reality becomes a dream and dream becomes a reality.
At the core of every artwork is a unique individual vision and an artist knows neither limits nor rules in choosing the tools to express it. The interplay between fantasy and reality has followed me throughout my life and has finally led me to the choice of the tools to express myself as an artist: a photo camera, a tool to capture real and common; and a computer - a tool to transform it into a dream. With the photo-camera and a computer I take the bits of reality and "choreograph" them into a cohesive "performance of the imagination". Everything you see in my work is real: people, sky, birds, trees - yet I want my audience to experience something extraordinary- a show in the "mind theatre" of an artist. I give my characters a new life in the world that, like a stage, will expose them to curious audiences. My photo-paintings are magical performances, elements of reality liberated from the restrictions of surroundings and released into a fantasy.
Besides employing the modern tools of painting, I developed a new way to make the process of experiencing my artwork more dramatic and striking. For the maximum effect the high-resolution image is divided into tiles. Each individual mini-image is giclee printed on archival paper and mounted onto MDFB (medium density fiber board) plate that is covered with an acid free dry mount tissue to ensure the durability and long life of the artwork. On the top it is covered with an acid free non-glare vinyl laminate that is 99% UV protective. The plates are mounted on the wall into a large tableau, creating a high-resolution "digital fresco". It's like the opening of a stage that reveals the "theatre" of my mind.
The curtain is up. The show is in progress...
