Beautiful colours, horrifying portraits.

Muhammad Yusuf, Features Writer

Andakulova Gallery, founded by Natalya Andakulova with a view to encourage a cultural dialogue between Central Asia and the Middle East, is presenting Between Fiction and Dreams, an exhibition where, for the first time, one can view paintings by three young contemporary artists from the legendary land of Karakalpakstan (Feb. 23 – May 23).

Sometimes regarded as terra incognita, since the middle of the last century, the Central Asian region which is located within Uzbekistan, has become terra cognita (familiar territory), thanks partly to the stupendous efforts of Igor Vitalyevich Savitsky, painter, archeologist and collector, especially of avant-garde art. Savitsky Museum in Nukus, the capital of the Karakalpakstan region, is named after him and has the largest collection of Karakalpak art.

Here is what Eleonore, who is the “traveller and dreamer” behind the Eleonore Everywhere blog thought of the museum and its founder: “Igor Savitsky was originally from Russia, but came to Karakalpakstan in the 1950s to participate in archaeological digs. He first began collecting Karakalpak handicrafts but then began collecting the works of Central Asian artists and later Russian avant-garde … he was obsessed with the museum and assembled a collection of over 90,000 works. Most of the art is from artists that would have otherwise been forgotten …”

Today, a new generation of young artists is working out their belief that the contemporary art of Karakalpakstan is a cultural marker of their region. Bakhtiyar Serekeyev, Timur Shardimetov and Salamat Babajanov who are showing their works at the gallery, are bright representatives of the artistic traditions Karakalpakstan. They give a new touch to old traditions in their artwork. Heritage includes such disciplines as carpet weaving, mats and clothes weaving, felting, wood carving, leather embossing and embroidery.

  Natalya Andakulova is the Founder of Andakulova Gallery.

Serekeyev remembers that “he has been painting since the age of five. My paintings are in different styles and genres, including expressionism and abstractionism”. Babajanov was born in 1990 in Nukus. He studied at the Karakalpak Lyceum – Boarding School of Fine and Applied Arts, Nukus State Pedagogical Institute. He works in an expressionist style. The trio received their higher education at the K. Behzad National Institute of Arts and Design in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. (K. Behzad is the legendary founder of the Herat miniature school). Since the 2010s, they and their generation have been shaping the face of a new national school of painting.

They introduced the rebellious spirit of expressionism and uninhibited painting into local art, which earlier was very traditional in terms of themes and intonation. Each of the artists has the ability to transform the most personal, the most terrifying and the most beautiful subjects, into powerful energies of colour. Sometimes the compositions are dark, sometimes they are bright, and oft times they light up with unexpected shades. This is confessional art at its best - and that is part of its attraction. After all, today, when everything can be printed on a 3D printer, there still exists a primordial longing and craving for such paintings.

The artists work within the confines of figurativeness, filling their pieces and approaches with the expressionistic method and a surreal stream of consciousness – which are the techniques of the masters of the London School. The works open up space for unexpected interpretations. Depending on the context, people see the subjects in them as heroes of Stanley Kubrick’s films (William Harford — Eyes Wide Shut; Lionel Mandrake — Dr. Strangelove; Pvt. Pyle — Full Metal Jacket), while others plunge headlong into a world full of otherworldly whispers, mysterious symbols or parodies.

The fictional dream is a term coined by the late American writer John Gardner. In The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers, Gardner writes: “The most important single notion in the theory of fiction I have outlined … is that of the vivid and continuous fictional dream. According to this notion, the writer sets up a dramatised action in which we are given the signals that make us “see” the setting, characters, and events; that is, he does not tell us about them in abstract terms, like an essayist, but gives us images that appeal to our senses — preferably all of them, not just the visual sense — so that we seem to move among the characters, lean with them against the fictional walls, taste the fictional gazpacho, smell the fictional hyacinths.”

So, the characters in a work between fiction and dreams need to seem like real-life individuals with joys and sorrows, vulnerable yet powerful when needed. The setting must be relatable and possible to see and smell and touch and done with enough lucidity and physicality, you could imagine yourself there at that moment. Between Fiction and Dreams will certainly shake you up and take you out from your comfort zone, as you wander between fantasy and reality. Maybe it will force you to think about the frightening transience of life; perhaps you will suddenly find yourselves close to something invisible and otherworldly, a place far from the banality of everyday life. Whatever the case, it will be a landmark in your art life.

Andakulova Gallery has successfully opened and presented viewers in the Middle East with perhaps some of the most striking art from Central Asia. Gallery Founder Natalya Andakulova would like to reintroduce the art of the Central Asian ‘Stans’ to the artistic hub of Dubai. Her gallery does this by building academic and professional relationships between artists, writers, art specialists, and collectors.