Text: Ekaterina Kenigsberg
Delicate romanticism and philosophical generalization are equally characteristic of Yury Alisevich. Since student days he has made sketches from nature with a pencil or a pen on paper. As a rule, they are urban and rural landscapes and interiors. Initially, these sketches served as sketches for future works, then became a common alternative to photography – the artist doesn’t get into the way of using a camera. Eventually the drawings acquired an independent sense and were created specifically for the projects. Sometimes the works are accompanied by sufficiently detailed text explanations.
The series "My environment" is specially designed for the presentation in the Pavilion of the Republic of Belarus. The works give an opportunity to look into the personal space of the artist. The series is made with a black gel pen on slightly yellowish paper. Y.Alisevich reflects on paper the details of everyday life, not dividing them by importance. He sketches everything that surrounds him without embellishment: the interior of the apartment he lives, the workshop he works. Large and small details are of equal importance to the artist: from a spoon and a cup on the table to a sophisticated print on a carpet.
It is believed that an artist speaks to the world in the terms of colors. The works of Y.Alisevich are black and white nominally, and at first sight the line drawings seem to be monochrome. However, on closer examination it appears that works have color, but it is encrypted with detailed inscriptions and indexes. It is the inscription that becomes the communication means, letting into an encrypted color. Inscriptions do not distract from the composition, but accent the subject and leave space for spectators' imagination and creative rethinking. The spectator enters silently the space of a work, invents his own color spectrum, and creates an individual interpretation of a plot based on his own social and cultural experience.
A large-scale vision of the overall structure of composition, delicacy of expression and artistic language of metaphor are inherent in Y. Alisevich. Accurate drawing of thin lines emphasizes the subject. Sometimes the subjects may seem to be trite, but this banality is balanced by a wonderful sense of humor. Y. Alisevich doesn’t embellish the reality, doesn’t model the object-spatial environment – he lives in it and portrays it as it is. The sensualism of his works is compensated by static character of images. However, this seemingly static composition is filled with internal dynamics.
Some conventionality and flatness of images characterize the series. The composition variability emphasizes the laconism of expressions. The works are a kind of dialogue between the artist and the audience. The artist teaches the audience the art of vision, using simple tools: a pencil (or a gel pen) and paper. As a result, everyone will find something he wills and able to find. Someone will see a fine spatial work, full of light and shade, lines and reflections; somebody will feel his or her involvement in the ideas of the artist, other people, not interested in the works, will go past.
Y.Alisevich treats his surroundings as art value, which is an original basis for exit to another dimension dominated by naturalness and independence.