Ruptly
"Belarusian artist Kirill Mikhalenko found an unusual way of painting; he creates his works using oil and linen. Footage taken on Friday shows the artist walking through his own exhibition, Petroleum, and talking about his paintings. Video also captures the process of creating the artworks. "For me, working with oil is like carrying on my family tradition. My relatives and ancestors worked in the oil industry, both in Belarus and in Russia. And I work with oil too, but in an artistic way. And I work with oil too, but in an artistic way; in a sense, everything has been brought together through me,” Mikhalenko explained. “My great-grandfather, who studied at the art academy, was unable to finish his studies, and now that I have graduated from Gomel State Art College, I have completed what he started and am following in the footsteps of my ancestors," he noted. For Kirill, this project is also appealing because of its symbolic significance. "We are replacing the traditional mediums of artistic expression, such as gouache, oil and tempera, with crude oil. Oil that fuels our world’s economy, drawn from the very depths of our planet," he said. The idea of using oil in an unconventional way was conceived by the sculptor and designer Maksim Petrul, which he then suggested to Kirill. He is now the curator of the exhibition. "The aim of the project is to promote Belarusian art and broaden the range of possibilities in the modern era, in the era of oil, when oil has become so very important to us and drives a huge number of processes, propelling our lives forward," Petrul said. The Petroleum project, comprising 20 paintings, is to be exhibited in Moscow and St Petersburg in the near future."
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