How long is the way!
I’ve been punished by creation as Ahasuerus was punished by immortality.
Expelled from Paradise, locked up in that damned Cartesian coordinate system,
where none of the axes describes the movement of the spirit,
I’m moving on, confusing cities, children and countries, changing wives and occupations. From Odessa and architecture, through Kiev and puppet theatre, set design, theatre direction, Georgia, drawing, painting…
With mulish obstinacy, I’m trying to portray this life, the meaning of which is unknown to me.
As the amoeba will never see the beauty of an ornament,
I’ll never know whether love is really Indian blue and death is Naples yellow.
I want to know a secret, which is hidden at the border between light and darkness.
I saw the sea in the calm at sunrise and a white horse in the fog on the hillside at the Ferapontov Monastery.
I saw the heel of the Prodigal Son.
I know where the Gefilte-Fish lives.
I witnessed the fall of the great Wormwood Star (Chernobyl, in Ukrainian) and the roar of Clio’s chariot on the streets of Tbilisi.
I know the bliss of children’s confidence and the joy of a blank canvas.
I know how this world is done.
God created man in His image and likeness. Hence the slavish dependence on form was born.
And the whole history of art is an escape from this kind of slavery. A thousand-year exodus.
Dashed lines on a draught depict something that is invisible, but known.
I’m depicting a mystery, which is known and is obvious only to me.