Rinat Mustafin: "From the zenith point, our world looks like an abstract painting"

As a child, I didn't like going to kindergarten very much, and sometimes my mother took me to work with her — she was a curator at the Magnitogorsk Art Gallery. There was a fund in the basement where many vivid examples of our decorative and applied art were kept: a splint, a Dymkovsky toy, a gzhel, a Kaslin casting, and some elegant bone crafts. Once I even broke off a bone horn from a deer figurine, I had to glue it somehow... Now I understand that my mother was essentially letting me play with works of art — I admired them even then, but I didn't fully understand it. And I think that played a role in who I became.

I've always been involved in art for as long as I can remember, but it seemed to me that I shouldn't integrate my work into the art industry. That it would ruin and distort my work. Therefore, the work usually took a very long time, up to ten years on one episode, as with Zenit. Before the pandemic, it seemed to me the right and normal thing to do, not like the format adopted today — to make a series quickly, sell it, integrate into the mainstream, and so on. I saw art as something very sublime, and I didn't want to mix it with commerce.

I've been painting all my life, since I was a kid. I made toys for myself and built whole cities for them. Perhaps that's why my creations have been something sacred to me for a long time. But with the pandemic, I realized that I still needed to try to integrate my art into the world, otherwise no one would see it. Admitting all this was not easy, but it seemed to me a more realistic way of looking at things. Before that, art for me was a process separate from my work and other pursuits, an isolated world where I took my time and tried to realize my ideas.

Before the pandemic, I was creating scenes for various festivals and other musical events. And with its onset, I found myself in a difficult situation — no activities, no earnings. And I found a group in FB "Ball and Cross", where I was able to earn some small money — five thousand per schedule. It allowed me to live somehow, pay for my room, and at the same time forced me to draw more. I realized that I really like doing this and making money this way.
Almost at the same time, the WIP mansion appeared, for which I designed and opened a whole gallery there, where I attracted young artists and learned how to curate exhibitions. So, in fact, I created a sandbox for myself, where I joined the art world even more and understood what was what.

I have a series of abstract works where I apply the principles of minimalism and abstract expressionism. Initially, I wanted to create works where a form filled with color fits perfectly into a space, lives in it and somehow changes it, creates movement or closes something on itself. This series is my outlet, I keep coming back to it. Everything except composition, color, and texture is cut off in it. These paintings do not open a window into some illusory space, they do not pull into it, but rather turn outwards - the flow goes in the other direction. As with the yellow rectangle, I wanted to create a yellow spot of a shape that glowed on the wall, exuding color like some kind of fragrance. I often hang this work on the wall in the workshop, it makes me feel good.

The idea of the Zenit exhibition was born more than 10 years ago. In the process of using Google Maps, I, like many, began to stumble upon various interesting places in which I saw abstract compositions. Moreover, the compositions are perfect — texture, perfect color ratio, geometry. It amazed me and I started taking screenshots of these compositions. There was no goal yet, but I thought that for some reason it was important to keep them. And then I decided to draw them — I thought that oil and acrylic could beautifully convey that texture, and as close as possible to the original image, with the same colors and contours. Then I created the first works in this series, they will be at the exhibition. Then I started studying art and thinking more about this story conceptually. For example, I came up with the idea that I strive to convey this image realistically, although I usually draw abstractions. Because if you look at our world from the zenith, it looks like an abstract painting. I was very attracted to this idea. In addition, sacred geometry is close to me — individual shapes or figures fascinate me. And from a height, our world ceases to be just a collection of objects, and takes on a more interesting form from the point of view of painting. At the same time, the texture of this abstraction is as detailed as possible.

Ideally, I would like to see a scaled-down copy of the Earth's surface, depicted in some way on canvas — I would give a lot to see what it might look like. And when I look at the ground from an airplane, I also can't believe my eyes: how rich this texture is, an endless source of inspiration for abstract painting.

I've always enjoyed working with this new digital reality. Satellite images of the Earth and Google Maps, which appeared thanks to them, have become part of it. Thanks to them, people began to look at the world differently — with a less romantic, more pragmatic view. Everyone began to understand geography a little better, to have some kind of clearer model of the world in their heads. But the view of the world from above also reflects the time, the current view of things is post-futurist, devoid of romance. So for me, the concepts of modern painting and this "modern" view of the world converge at one point.

The project related to Google Street View goes into a slightly different plane. This is also a modern way of looking at the world, but in a different way. The interesting thing here is that everything we see in this service is not filmed on purpose. This is the most random mechanism for capturing the world and is also a good source for the artist. Given that these maps are constantly being updated, the variety of plots is almost endless. That is, a full-fledged world is being created there with the most honest slice of society, only with smeared faces, which is also appropriate. This is an element of real realism. This is a more humane project, but it is based on the same digital mechanics and filtering of huge streams of information.

Both projects also attract me in the sense that graphics, painting, and all these new services are two mediums that are as far apart as possible, some very ancient and archaic, others the most modern.

If we talk about abstractions, I am very inspired by Jean Arp and Peter Doig — I love his painting and his discussions about it. I've always liked Ainsworth Kelly. Of the abstract expressionists, Willem De Kooning was impressed by his approach to painting as a process, its display on canvas. The same goes for Pollock, for the same reason. The fact that he creates such compositions without touching the brush at all... I would also mention Isama Naguchi — what abstract forms he creates. When I look at Arpa's or Naguchi's sculptures, I think a lot about how close they are to a kind of perfect form.