The exhibition «Glass» by Alexander Fokin opened at the Russian Academy of Arts

06.05.2024

The Russian Academy of Arts presents an exhibition of works by the Honored Artist of the Russian Federation, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Arts Alexander Ivanovich Fokin “Glass”. The exhibition will showcase several dozen works created using the frosted engraved glass technique, which is considered perhaps the most sophisticated and refined in the history of world glassmaking.

Alexander Fokin creates his works, reviving in Russian art interest in this classical type of glass processing, the heyday of which in Europe and Russia occurred in the 17th - 18th centuries. Engraving is one of the methods of cold glass processing; grinding a shallow negative matte image onto the surface of a product using a rotating copper or abrasive wheel. While working, the author does not have the opportunity to eliminate inaccuracies - the slightest wrong movement, and it is impossible to correct the drawing, as on paper. It requires refinement, firmness of hand and a jeweler's sense of relief form and perfectly matches the peculiarities of the creative individuality of the master, giving wide artistic possibilities and giving the works unexpected effects.

Impeccable mastery of the instrument allows the artist to achieve gradation of light and shadow, contrasts of transparent and matte, line and spot, and create unique original works.

A. Fokin’s favorite genre is portraiture, which is considered one of the most difficult in this art form. The skill of a draftsman, mastery of the means of plastic modeling, the ability to notice and capture characteristic features allowed him to create accurate psychologically expressive images. The internal characteristics of his works are reliable, although he does not scrupulously convey all the features of the external appearance, but dwells on the main thing in his perception of the model, subordinating the drawing and plastic relief to this. He follows the inner feeling of nature and copes with equal success both with a generalized solution of images of representatives of past eras - V. Belinsky, M. Lermontov, A. Radishchev, and with deeply realistic images of his contemporaries - portraits of colleagues, his loved ones - his wife, children, friends and just acquaintances. In them, the artist often uses a round shape of the layer, “enveloping” the image and giving it completeness, while the transparency and internal glow of the glass create a special lyricism.

On irregularly shaped blocks, Fokine depicts plot compositions, sometimes complementing them with color accents, as, for example, in the work “Dreams” (2021). Optical glass with its absolute transparency creates a light-air spatial environment that the author values. As a rule, he leaves the background clean, only occasionally depicting additional details with light shading. His landscapes are simple, his favorite motif being trees weaving bare branches into a graceful pattern. What is important here is not the complexity, but the internal symbolic fullness; these are landscapes-reflections, in which the laconicism of the means only emphasizes a single idea.

In his works, modernity is combined with eternal themes, restraint with the complexity of content, professionalism with a wonderful sense of the beauty of the material. His art forces you to carefully examine and reflect, and finds a vivid emotional response in the soul of the viewer. The perfection of stylistic composition and plastic solutions, the excellent execution of his works place Alexander Fokin, without a doubt, among the leading glass artists of our time.