What is a dialog among artists? What is special about it?

In my opinion, the series “Line of Soutine” by Igor Tishin is a fine example of such a dialog. Igor is obviously not the first artist who had turned to Soutine in his artistic oeuvre. It would be enough to mention such coryphaeus’s as Francis Bacon and Willem de Kooning. However, this work is not reminiscent of what has already been done, it is original, with a very special, Tishin kind of humor.

Igor Tishin possesses a unique ability to utilize in his work practically any visual images. At times, it seems as random reproductions and photographs, that the artist has stumbled upon by chance. Such phantasmagoria, as in Tishin’s works, is perhaps characteristic for dreams, when looking for a rational explanation would be inappropriate, and mainly – unnecessary.

I believe that probably the right analog of this approach in Israeli contemporary art is the creation of Zvi Tolkovsky. Yet, while Tolkovsky uses a “secular iconography” of the Euro-American and Middle Eastern culture, Tishin’s world is one of the socialistic culture mythology, such as the images of a Belorus partisan or a female in an old fashioned underwear.

Tishin never transfers visual materials onto a canvas or a paper in a “mechanical” way, he rather re-creates it, according to the rules of his unique world, where all can co-exist, and each object finds its proper place. At face value, Igor’s works are simple and nonchalant, but in fact they are extremely precise and well executed.

For me, Tishin’s art is one more proof to the fact that a true talent just doesn’t give a damn about being up-to-date, contemporary artist, but is instead plainly CREATING.

Leonid Zeiger
Jerusalem, May 2011

Igor Tishin – CV and exhibitions