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ARTICLE ABOUT CREATIVITY OF THE ARTIST
"I didn't like an oval since childhood,
I've been drawing an angle since childhood"
(Pavel Cogan, Russian poet)
 
A truly amazing aspect of the painted works by Boris Klevogin is the complex lyrical interaction of Round and Sharp.
The forms of Round and Sharp are simultaneously opposed and then brought together in the works of this talented master, like the symphony sections of string and horns under the control and sway of a virtuoso conductor.
The balance is clear and precise and completely enchanting.
Full, Rounded and very feminine pears with sharp points turned up and aside, as well as oblong round marrows that have very sharp pedicles which seem to lift and point into space, as if searching for a quiet and divine resolution of their own while still safely nestled within the composition.
One can also see also perfect dandelion spheres, frozen in the still air (gorgeous!), interwoven with needle-sharp straws to create an illusion of structure and solidity, becoming not unlike a fragment of almost other-worldly cloth.
Spirituality abounds, but Maestro Klevogin never stops to lecture or pose heavy handed, instead he merely shows us a glimpse of its most perfect creations and through such seemingly simple compositions shares with us a glimpse of the intangible built upon the diametrically opposed to create a window to our delicate, though sometimes hardened souls. Each work is like a mirror, we merely need to take the time to look to truly see ourselves within the infinite play of forms and edges and recognize how much we all have in common with nature and divinity.
The illumination of each object is full and un- questionably truthful. There are no half lights or shadows to play havoc with the purity. The symmetry seems mathematical in its conception but completely poetic in its execution. Logical to the point absurdity, we can't help but smile at the glimpses behind the curtain that Boris Klevogin has allowed us to share with him. He is a singular talent, to speak (whisper) words with his art that all understand, breathtaking crystalline imagery that speaks a language as perfect as the one from which they all sprang.
He paints for us the world of thorns and burs, world of round soft cotton-cloudy pears that invite and pose aloof with equal candor. The clouds in his landscapes are sharp, honest and clear in their purpose but quite capable of carrying all the dreams we need them to. Trees are round/plump and full like the apples and pears but still maintain a brilliant handling of contrast and reserve.
The grass looks as if it had been promptly cut by a lawn-mower man, and all this is shown with luxuriant green on bushes and trees.
The snow-covered forest is sharp and finite. Broken glass is a geometrical apotheosis of thinness, sharpness and perhaps the fragility of truth? Cool apple spheres resembling Scythe's and crescent moons, poised in the air of his works like a reminder of the sins of the flesh and the ever beckoning landscape of forbidden fruit. Pavel Cogan wrote: "and again the moon is like a yataghan" - a very similar vision indeed!
Looking into the painting of his "glass" we see besides the exquisitely sensual reflectiveness, a sea of deep turbulent layers of translucence that is anything but frozen beneath that surface. Sharp and so exquisitely smooth is his feminity of form that we cannot but help to liken it to a dark and powerful panther stalking a moonless night, her each tread one of frightful yet alluring awareness.
The wonder of such evocation coming from the work of such a master realist is fascinating and often quite beguiling. It must give pause to any intelligent and sensitive person, standing before his work what a bright light truly shines down upon us all.
Lilac faint will not happen!
"The artist depicted lilac deep faint" - wrote ingenious Mandelshtam. There are no faints in Klevogin's works! On the contrary- it is restrained, masculine and wholly humanistic; sometimes painfully soul- felt so. We can see the love of life, the fun of existence and the coldness of reality in every stroke, in very form. His Work transcends the evolutionary norm; it circumvents us back to the beginning and then eventually the end of the darkness where creation begins again.
This is a concept of artistic toying on a GOD like level that Maestro Klevogin has no equal.
B. Klevolgin is an undoubted professional. There is a creative line of such titans as Dali and Escher in his works: regarding an increased sense of objects FORMS and surrealistic hidden code of paintings. Complex intense emptiness of compositions and intentional neatness charm us, as if denying luxurious carelessness of classic still-lives of old Dutchmen. Nothing thrown, no crumpled curtains, everything is strictly formed, calculated and symmetrical.
Order in the cosmos, control of our lives.
It's merely skin to hold back what Maestro Klevogin knows is truly boiling beneath.
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