37 × 29 cm
Orgalite, egg tempera, lacquer
V–A–C Sreda online magazine continues its three-month programme devoted to space and its reflection in culture, art, and the utopian dreams of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In this issue, we publish a work by artists Boris and Kaleria Kukuliev, participants in the exhibition The Sunset Fired a Hundred Suns at GES-2 House of Culture.
The main theme of the work executed in the Palekh miniature technique is the black infinity of the Universe, a metaphor for the endless sky. Here, traditional fairy-tale images are reinterpreted in a new way: proverbial folk heroes are replaced by cosmonauts floating in a dark void. Spun by solar whirlwinds, they casually levitate in zero gravity around an anthropomorphic star.
The cosmonauts are dressed in cloaks decorated with scattering constellations, emblems more fitting to superhero costumes than space suits. Two of them reach out, seemingly trying to grasp interstellar matter, another holds a mysterious device that resembles a film camera—though for all three, dreams of space and sky remain the common denominator.