UVG Art Gallery is pleased to present the second solo-exhibition in Budapest by famous Russian artist Ilya Gaponov (Saint-Petersburg, Russia). He is a participant of personal and group exhibitions in the UK, Hungary (including Ludwig Museum, Budapest), Russia, France and Switzerland. Nominee of the Kandinsky Prize. His art works are in the collections of the State Russian Museum, the National Center for Contemporary Art (Moscow, Yekaterinburg), as well as private collections in Hungary, the UK, Germany, and the USA, France, South Korea.
In the Late Lunch series, Ilya Gaponov moves along the path suggested by the art history of the arts. The series is the apogee of the development of still life in the evolution of the author. In it, he is looks at the consumer society from the position of the philosopher. Gaponov refers to the tradition of Dutch painting XVII-XVIII - Stilleven (Dutch — Quiet life), as well as in its later version, combining various directions — banquet pieces, floral and ostentatious still lifes, Vanitas. Of particular importance is precisely the latter, the Dutch masters included in the compositions the symbols of the frailty of being clearly read by the audience of their era — images of the skull, cut and faded flowers, candles. Ilya picks up this intellectual game, complementing the symbolism of modern and well-recognized fast food brands. Thus, the artist focuses on accelerating the already vain world, and takes a step towards consciously reducing the genre: exquisite dishes of the Dutch Stilleven, which implied measured taste, and emphasizing the importance of their owner, is replaced by a hamburger — a new symbol of the XXI century still life, which excludes the possibility of regularity and elitism.
