VATICAN

Size: 175 × 212 cm.

This large-format canvas belongs to the series “The End of Film” (2006–2007). In this cycle Shabelnikov renders iconic historical and cultural images in bluish tones reminiscent of aged film negative, adding to each the closing caption “konets” / “the end” – a sign of finality and of the images passing into the archive of twentieth-century cinema. When exhibited, a white roly-poly toy was set opposite the paintings, standing for the frozen gaze of a viewer still mesmerised by the screen after the film has ended. The series is a kind of “play on the apocalypse,” in tune with the eschatological moods of the early 2000s, and belongs to what has been described as the artist’s apocalyptic period. The work’s title brings the image of the Vatican – a religious and historical centre – into the cycle, in keeping with the enduring interest in ideological and historical motifs of Shabelnikov, a member of the Rostov group “Art or Death.”