Dmitry Shorin and Andrey Dvin present large-scale cloud spaces symmetrically reflected in each other in the “SKY” project. The series consists of diptychs, parts of which are painted by Shorin and Dvin separately. Identical in form but different in style and texture, the symmetrical diptychs create the effect of a mirage, a fractal changing space.

Along with the mannerist beauty of the sky, the artists convey its majestic emptiness, that the imagination strives to fill. The man inhabits the sky, endowing it with his feelings, guessing familiar images in the outlines of clouds. In a series of paintings, the artists construct pompous airy castles somewhere in the cold heights, detached from earthly things, sacred – for sky dwellers and birds.

The paintings of the exhibition are arranged in a complete diurnal cycle: dawn, day, sunset and night are unfolded by light and air perspective with shades of pearly, blue, dark blue, pink and yellow tones.

First large-scale, jewellery-painted skies appeared in the works of Dutch artists of the XVII century, thanks to which they transformed the genre of landscape into a portrait of changeable, immense nature, at the same time expressing the mood and emotions of the plot through it. Among the Dutch we can distinguish Jacob van Reisdal, Jan Porcellis; among the English artists of the XVIII century who continued this line – William Turner, John Constable; among the French artists of the XIX century – “barbizons” Theodore Rousseau, Jules Dupre, Charles-François Dobigny. The “Peredvizhniki” of the 19th century are central to the tradition of Russian realist landscape, and the sky in their paintings manifests itself in very different ways. Emotional intensity is most manifested in the paintings of Alexey Savrasov, Isaac Levitan; solemnity – in the paintings of Ivan Shishkin, Nikolay Dubovsky; aestheticisation – in the paintings of Arkhip Kuindzhi, and in this line it is of importance to name another famous artist of the XIX century – Ivan Aivazovsky.

In the history of art, the grandeur and staginess of the realistic depiction of the sky is inevitable by nature, and this can be traced in both Western European and Russian paintings. Dmitry Shorin and Andrey Dvin, inheriting a great tradition, simultaneously strengthen these properties, creating a monumental scale and working with the sky already as a pure form, devoid of support in the form of landscape.