Dubossarsky & Vinogradov

Dubossarsky & Vinogradov's pictures are hallucinatory: they combine brilliant colours, an entertaining style of painting, figures tumbling over each other, orgasmic scenes full of detail, explicit eroticism, allusions to the icons of popular culture, and huge panoramic multi-panel formats. In their enthusiasm to seduce the art public, Dubossarsky & Vinogradov display a Neo-Baroque attitude. They conjure up impressive tableaux bursting with apparent sunshine and beauty. In both style and content, they base their work on Social Realist painting, which was also imbued with optimism. The crucial difference is that Social Realist paintings were explicitly intended to serve as state propaganda and their 'optimism' had a bitter aftertaste at a time when (by the Stalinist era) the reality of Soviet life was so clearly brutal and dreary. 0Exhibition: Kunsthal KAdE, Amersfoort, the Netherlands (4.5.-25.8.2013).