Vladimir
Vasilyevich AbaimovPRO

It makes no sense to approach the artist with questions: what did you want to say with your painting, what is depicted on it? Researchers, critics, just spectators should ask these questions first of all to themselves. I was convinced of this, having met the artist Vladimir Abaimov.
It so happened that even before seeing the pictures of the artist, I was able to learn the opinion of the audience about them from the guest book from his exhibitions. Reading this most interesting document, it was impossible to determine how to relate to the artist: some envied his talent and confessed that he was close and comprehensible to them, others advised him to change his occupation and did not understand anything in his paintings. Moreover, some astrologers with certainty predicted the artist's well-being and prosperity, others with no less certainty predicted the extinction of creativity.
The work of art is addressed directly to our soul, feelings, and, dissecting the picture, like a butterfly, we simply deprive it of its original meaning. And the audience continues to try to find out: why, what it is, or say: not so, it does not happen. But doesn’t each of us know the difference between the thing and the thought it caused, between the visible, the concrete and the associations, fantasies, elusive and mysterious transformations of feelings in our soul? The artist who can express, show it. An artist is like a medium that translates sounds, words, feelings into colors and lines. The variety of themes and techniques of Vladimir Abaimov seems to one to be a flirting of the artist with a spectator, to others - his inability to find himself, "his own theme".
The artist himself explains that the choice of style, form, technique of execution is dictated by a specific goal, the content of the plan. If he was attracted by the matte elasticity of Siberian apples, then he takes these apples as they are, and now the viewer watches "Still Life with Wine" almost with appetite and enjoys their freshness.
These pictures are realistic, understandable and like the viewers. However, others are left at a loss: "What can broken parts say about broken parts?" "Pink Floyd" is understandable, but why over the city? - ask about the painting "You would go there (" Pink Floyd "above the city)". Knowing the music of this group, it seems to me that it has the rarest feature in our time, which is unique to the classics - the ability to soar, to be "above", to be unearthly, to be carried off into the sky.
The artist said that at one time such pictures did not go to the exhibitions at all: “understandable” pictures were put aside in one direction, “incomprehensible” - in another.
A man leaving in the twilight of the crucified Christ. His back to Christ, with his head lowered in thought (the painting "Loneliness"). What is it - God-seeking or the search for an answer in itself? Anything can happen. And there are plenty of answers, thoughts for the thinking, excited viewer.
“And did you notice,” Vladimir asks me, “how does the viewer change from exhibition to exhibition?” One record of such a spectator, which sounds almost poetic, for some reason I remembered: “What business do we have - did you suffer or not? What do we need to know about your excitement?”. I wonder where he saw the artist, not worried and not suffering? Any true artist, by virtue of his originality, is doomed to loneliness, and, if incomplete, but incomprehension. And the tragedy or happiness of the artist in his inability to withdraw, turn away from the outside world. The presence of inner freedom, as an indispensable condition of creativity, gives the artist the right to work without thinking, but the picture is finished and there is always a moment when it is necessary to show it, to bring it outside.
On the way to the viewer, Vladimir Abaimov went through many doubts, difficulties, objective and subjective. He organizes his exhibitions himself, hangs pictures in the order that he himself intended. This order, by the way, does not contribute to the simplicity of perception, but the artist consciously mixes genres and styles: after all, nothing is laid out in life in life. I regret that I did not see all the paintings of Abaimov - some were bought and taken away by foreigners, some - in private collections and galleries of the city.
The grateful viewers "appreciated" about ten works in their own way - they simply stole them from exhibitions. But the game is worth the candle, if only because there are such reviews: "I want to go back to your pictures, look and think," "You see the world differently from me, but I like your view."
In my heart I didn’t stop talking for a long time, a whole chorus of voices was buzzing: the artist, the audience, my own, and each other was replaced by one of the images created by the glider: it was the laughing happy face of the artist’s wife, then Louis Armstrong blew his soul through the pipe ... I saw how an artist, in whose soul a clear image has already matured or is just beginning to appear, approaches a pure white canvas or sheet of paper before the creation of the world and cannot touch it because he is afraid of responsibility as a creator. But he will still do his job, otherwise why did he come to this world?

Olga Babanova