Russians in an alien landscape
FOR new-wave post-soviet artist Dmitry Sandjiev the story of his epiphanic art conversion reads like a report from the X-Files.
But even Fox Mulder and Dana Scully would find it an incredible case. A cloudless night, a lonely railway station in southern Sweden, just a couple of miles from Malmo airport and a Russian painter abducted by alien beings from another world. That’s the way Dmitry Sandjiev insists it happened, and he’s been painting Lucy in the sky with diamonds ever since. “What I do know is that 48 hours of my life went missing, and my only memories of the event are of aliens,” says the painter. “I stopped painting reality and instead started working on my series Myths of the Planets.”
Sandjiev’s work will go on display for the first time in the UK at the London Salon Russe show at The Gallery in Redchurch Street Gallery, Shoreditch, which runs until November 25. Each week features one of four leading exponents of Russian contemporary art: Anatoly Mosiychuk, scheduled to open the first week, followed by Alexander Babin, then from November 13 to 19, Dmitry Sandjiev and finally Alexander Jhernokluev.
The show is a brainchild of 34-year-old expatriate Russian art expert Anna Korganas, who lives in St John’s Wood. Her Salon Russe online art gallery, founded just a year ago, specialises in the latest crop of talented Russian contemporary artists. Elena Borissova
* The Gallery in Redchurch Street, Shoreditch.
Tel: 020 7287 8408 www.salonrusse.com