H O R R O R W O O D

Today I’m wiring and packing paintings to be shipped to US. One of them - for another wonderful group show, in WWA gallery, Culver City, Los Angeles. The show title is HORRORWOOD, set to open on Friday, October 15th, 2010, which will run through November 20th, 2010, looking for a homage to classic Horror film genre.

I’m having a mixed media painting titled „fog in Lily's room” for the show. Sneak peek detail below:

When proposed to participate in this show by the Industrial Squid team, I was thinking how to be honest in doing my contribution.. I mean, I haven’t exactly been raised with Hollywood horror films for lullabies. I wanted the reference to come from some deeper bins of my consciousness, not just from the potboiler slashers in cinema in my adolescence, visited with boys to hide by their bosom from the atrocity to be seen.

And so, I delved into my past, and it all went to the soviet animation hit ‘Hedgehog in the fog’ from 1975 which is the ‘horror film’ of my childhood, watched with a mix of delight and fright. It is classics over here, maybe not directly of ‘horror’ genre, but with some quite similar elements. And, as I find it, has a comprehensive tale about a travel of haunted soul - to find the peace of mind in the end.

I also like the idea that all the horror is found just in one’s mind – the best ‘horror’ films leave room for the viewer’s own imagination to fill in the developments and details, which is scarier than anything that is ever shown there.


The ‘Hedgehog in the fog’ by Yuriy Norsteyn.
In 2003 "Hedgehog in the Fog" won the "№1 Animated film of all the time" at "All time animation best 150 in Japan and Worldwide" contest in Tokyo, Japan. So, watch it!

A very big part of the cartoons made these days are a very easy digestible food, nicely packed and chewed, all you have to do is sit comfortably and swallow, swallow, swallow.. which is sometimes good of course. Reliable and restful. But sometimes you long for something that {being maybe not so perfectly packed at the first glance} makes your heart tremble, and blows away your mind.. don't you?

I found this little jewel today:


Music video for little Dragons “Twice” by Johannes Nyholm
I think shadow animations are especially magical, as they leave so much space for your own imagination..