How cats, crazy old women - and the internet - brought punk artist fame

Vasya Lozhkin is one of modern Russia's underground art stars. He has not been nominated for prestigious art awards or exhibited at the Tretyakov Gallery, but social networks are overwhelmed with his works, and each has been reposted thousands of times. His artistic language is unmistakably recognizable, while his allegories are clear to any Russian, even if describing them is as difficult as explaining a joke. 

Russian satire

Lozhkin's key characters, repeated throughout his paintings, are a ginger cat and a vile old woman in a headscarf. The feline is loved by Internet users (and is popular with buyers), while the female seems inspired either by Baba Yaga, the wicked witch of Russian fairy tales, or is a collective image of an evil neighbor. Apart from these, Lozhkin's world is inhabited by bears, hares, pigs and other animals, as well as drunken, unshaven men and a variety of ghouls.

Motherland – Over There. Source: Vasya Lozhkin

The world turns out to be dangerous and unattractive – scary faces bathe in oil, scoff, drink and threaten you with death. It looks like a wicked satire on contemporary reality, ridiculing human vices, economic sanctions, lack of political freedom and the Soviet legacy. It seems that in Lozhkin's fictional town of Kobylozadovsk (which can be translated from Russian as "a horse's rear end"), you can recognize any small town in the Russian hinterland.

Many of his paintings might be confusing to foreigners. Sometimes Lozhkin illustrate aphorisms, jokes, phrases from movies, slogans from Soviet posters or well-worn clichés that every Russian is tired of seeing, in a straightforward way - like in the triptych Motherland – Over There. In it, a colorful and happy 'motherland' is represented by a family of bears in red shirts under a birch trees a 'sputnik' satellite flying through the sky, while behind a barbed-wire-fenced 'over there' resembles a black-and-white hell with devils.

The Den. Source: Vasya Lozhkin

Other works are more universal – a gloomy, freshly washed cat in the shower with the inscription I will take revenge, or Portrait of Kitler (a cat looking like Hitler) – and sometimes even lyrical, like Den, with a female bear and a bear cub under the quilt.

I will take revenge. Source: Vasya Lozhkin

Artistic lawyer

In reality, the artist's name is Alexei Kudelin. Bald, with glasses and a goatee, he looks like a mild-mannered doctor or professor. Aged 40, he is a lawyer by training, while by occupation, as he puts it, he is an artist who cannot draw, a musician who cannot read music, and a blogger who lays no claims to literary talent.

Portrait of Kitler. Source: Vasya Lozhkin

Although he has been engaged in music since childhood, and formed his own punk band right after high school, he became popular not for his music but his pictures. Lozhkin considers himself a punk in painting.

Vasya Lozhkin is a pseudonym, which became his nickname on a LifeJournal.com blog more than a decade ago. The artist got caught up in the Internet and, after receiving yet another gallery rejection began posting his paintings on the Internet. That is where Lozhkin found fame. The original images painted with acrylic on canvas received digital life, paintings began to find buyers, five music albums came out in the last few years, art galleries across the country and the Moscow Central House of Artists hosted his exhibitions, and a Prague nightclub used images of his cats to decorate its walls.

Vasya Lozhkin (Alexei Kudelin) at an exhibition of his paintings at the Central House of Artist (TsDKh).  Source: Alexandra Mudrats/TASS

The artist denies having any political, social or other influences - much to the amusement, anger or irritation of his admirers and critics. In his imagery, there is no attempt to portray (and smear) the whole of Russia – each observer sees what they want in his paintings. He is interested in human madness, psychosis, stupidity, hallucinations, borderline states and the hidden corners of the soul – the world as if seen through the eyes of a madman.

Self-inspired

His pictorial images have no specific prototypes – Lozhkin bases all his characters on his own image.

Vasya Lozhkin

Vasya Lozhkin

Vasya Lozhkin

Vasya Lozhkin

Vasya Lozhkin

Vasya Lozhkin

Vasya Lozhkin

Vasya Lozhkin

Vasya Lozhkin

 

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He just takes a mirror, contorts his face, exaggerates his features and comes up with one big self-portrait. Another source is suburban trains, which he used to use a lot, when he lived in the tiny town of Solnechnogorsk, near Moscow. At that time, he carried a notebook for sketches, and if he found an image amusing enough, he would invent a story behind it.

Perhaps, only the cat – a creature found in Russia in almost every village house - appeared all by itself.

By Lozhkin's own definition, the genre of his works is a modern lubok – a traditional Russian popular print with a simple plot of an amusing or didactic nature, primitively painted and provided with an explanatory inscription. Essentially, it is a fairy tale, and, according to the author, with a happy ending. Even if it is difficult to believe it, from the first impression of these scary faces.

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