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Irina Kotina - Artist 

Irina Kotina is an original Russian artist, a student of Alexei Zagorodnykh, works with Yuri Kuper, co-founder of the magazine “Time of Culture”.

“An artist should feel eternity and at the same time be contemporary. The best work for me is something created in a modern language, but whose roots come from tradition”. Irina creates her world outside the popular trend of contrasts, open colors and bold statements. She writes multi-layered images that refer to secret dreams and theatricality. The viewer travels through the picture, first observing the overall composition, then he discovers new images and fragments. The subject of the author, that comes to the fore, is the influence of time, atmosphere and human influence on things.

Artist Yuri Kuper:
"First of all, I would like to note the unusual interpretation of the genre in which the artist Ira Kotina treats the landscape. The classic architectural cityscape is more of a close look at the architecture. Moreover, usually artists choose the panorama option. That is, they depict the city and its streets, looking at them as if from afar, as they say, "from a bird's eye view" (Canaletto, Guardi and many others).
In addition to architecture, an obligatory factor in this genre is the atmospheric state (day, morning, night, evening). Ira Kotina also has an atmospheric state, but it is rather semi-clear, rather fabulously fantastic, which is commonly called "between a wolf and a dog." A state that vibrates between evening or morning. Moreover, it seems to exist even simultaneously at different times of the year and more often in some snowy winter fairy-tale kingdom, which reminds us of Tsar Berendey or the scenery for The Nutcracker.
In fact, in her cityscapes there is a patina of this fairy-tale loneliness, suggestive of pleasant sadness. Although a light flickers in the illuminated windows, indicating the presence of some kind of life inside, this light is more like the flickering of a candle than an electric light bulb, and therefore this glow also becomes a fairly important part of the pictorial dramaturgy. Does the artist do it consciously or not? In the end, it doesn't matter. It is enough that this glow is there, it fascinates, makes us look at the surface of the picture longer, as if peering into the windows of inhabitants unfamiliar to us.
Another important element of the artist's script is the surface, which is a kind of snow-covered curtain through which we try to see the almost invisible, almost disappearing. And indeed, it seems to us that it can disappear at any moment, so we must hurry.
Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, I am not an art historian, so I look at the work of Ira Kotina as an artist, so my perception is rather subjective. I pay attention to the details hidden from the eyes of an art critic, and I am less interested in her, the artist, belonging to one or another artistic movement. In my opinion, she, as an artist, is lonely, and her leitmotif is "contemplation" and almost childish, sad and fabulous loneliness."

Artist Alexey Zagorodnykh:
"Nostalgia for a bygone time, place or memories of people dear to the heart arises in almost every creative person. These feelings also touched the work of Ira Kotina, revealed in the theme of the "gone nature" of Voronezh.
An extremely ascetic palette focuses on the plot and invites you to enter into a dialogue in order to jointly search for something very important, familiar from childhood, a feeling of discovering the world. Plunging into the picture, you become a part of an event that took place more than 100 years ago.
The painting technique is akin to an amalgam of an old mirror, flowing from the shape of a building into an abstract pattern. An inquisitive viewer, plunging into a journey through time, suddenly feels himself between the surface of the mirror and what is reflected behind him. And only the fluorescent details of the picture return us from the "temporal corridor" to the reality of today's realities. You accept the terms of the game - and the freak in colorful clothes next to the architectural artifact, the zebra, the rainbow in the windows or illuminated advertising, are no longer shocking.
The paintings are not devoid of roughness, but they create that mood, that style that distinguishes Irina as an artist with her own vision, with her own aesthetics. And the reward for this work is the recognition of colleagues in the creative workshop.

Education 

2015 - 2020

Studio Zagorodnykh (Russia)

2011 - 2014

Art school (Voronezh, Russia)

Exhibitions 

Solo

2023

“Marvelous garden” (paintings). House of Architects (Voronezh, Russia).

2022

Amalgam” (paintings, collage). House of Architects (Voronezh, Russia)

2022

“Amalgam” (paintings). Architectural forum “ZodchestvoVRN” (Voronezh, Russia).

Group

2022

“ArtYuoth”, CEH “Manege” (Moscow, Russia)

2022

“Following the runner”, gallery Milli Art (Moscow, Russia)

2022

“Voronezh is here”, House of Architects (Voronezh, Russia)

2022

“Studio ZA_30", House of Architects (Voronezh, Russia)

2021

"Freedom of creativity", exhibition of young artists, Union of Artists of Russia. (Kursk, Russia)

2021

"Fragile", exhibition hall "Rodina", (Belgorod, Russia)

2020

The Way of Someone", Birkin Gallery (Voronezh, Russia). Together with artists Sergey Brudanin and Alina Solodina

2018

"Diptych", Book Club "Petrovsky" (Voronezh, Russia)

2016

"Ah, at Inber", House of Architects (Voronezh, Russia)

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