Craft, Imported and Specialty Beers: Primator Double 24
Mick Hart’s difficult job of reviewing craft, imported and specialty beers in Kaliningrad
23 January 2026 – Primator Double 24 beer – Mick Hart’s Dark Side
I’ve always liked them dark, so it’s been said. And yes, there was a time once when the proof was plain to see, but, in later years, I returned to the light and hoppy, and in the later years of later years learnt what Confucius never said and Confusion had no need to, that there comes a time in everyone’s life when you have to take not what you want but whatever is available.
You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes … you get what you need – Mick Jagger
Choice had no part to play on this auspicious occasion. Primator Double 24 was given to me as a present, and well received it was too.
Some beer drinkers, those who define value in terms of a beer’s strength, will latch onto Double 24 simply because its strength offers a ‘get me pissed quick’ option, whereas slow-session drinkers like myself err on the side of caution when brought face to face with potent ABVs, such as Double 24’s 10.5%.
Sampling for the purpose of critical appraisal is a mitigating factor. “Don’t be such a Nancy boy!” I heard a voice say, followed smartly by one with a Rushden accent: “Goo on, git it down yu!”
I always snub them, you know!
Primator Double 24 beer
Proceeding to uncap the bottle, the beer did not, I noticed, emit a strong, malty, hoppy whiff, which was what I was expecting. And you’d be hard pushed to say why not?
I always say ‘Why not?’ whenever I am offered something as succulent as this. Deeply rich and strong in caramels and malts, with plummy undertones, high notes, low notes, and where did I put my notebook? Who cares? Just keep on drinking. The body was muscular, but the head was wanting. Heads or tails and all that, but if I were a creamy head man, which I am not, I would not drink such beer, present or no present. I’d just tear off into the past, in my William Hartnell TARDIS, and drink Home Ales at the Tally Ho in Bakersfield before it got burnt down.
A Pilsner drinker (somebody’s got to drink the stuff) referred to this beer as “rather chewy”, and he might have a point. Not a very good one, but something just half sharp. Primator Double 24 may be a gob full, but it’s strikingly different and palatable. Biting off more than you can chew could be a worry if you intend to get home on a penny-farthing, but I blamed the slight light headedness felt halfway down the glass on any advance on chronic insomnia.
The very blackness of the beer brought back East London memories of evenings with Verina and potting the black in the middle pocket. I wouldn’t mind drinking this in my black bow tie and nothing else. It’s rich and slick and silky. But hear this! It’s also smooth and rounded; full-bodied, you might say, but then you’re a certified beer enthusiast, and I’m just a person who enjoys drinking beer.
Some of these Ace of Spades beers can, after a few attempts, go down like a four-sided triangle, but Primator 24 Double is 24/7 on the hangover clock – now, watch me get out of this one (I didn’t train Krav Maga 24 years for nothing!), but it will only give you a hangover if you drink too much. Take that!
Primator Double 24 beer
Predator, sorry, Primator Double, when whittled down to taste and quality, is a double six multiplied by 2. I cannot remember drinking anything like this when I was 24, and if I had drunk a lot of it in my younger days, I probably wouldn’t remember it, or anything else.
Sensible drinking, of which there is no such thing, dictates not drinking 24 bottles of 24 Double in one sitting, or else you won’t be sitting but slipping. However, as an occasional beer treat, no one, with the obvious exception of a crusty old teetotaller, would double down on you, as you double up with laughter, for doubling up on Primator 24 Double. It’s double black, and Black Beers Matter!
😊BOX TICKER’S CORNER Name of Beer: Primator Double 24 Brewer: Pivovar Náchod (Primátor a.s.) Where it is brewed: Czech Republic Bottle capacity: 0.5 litre Strength: 10.5% Price: 340-540 roubles (£3.32 / £5.27) Appearance: Dark with a cherry-red hue Aroma: Complex blend of caramel, cherries and chocolate Taste: Rich, prune-cherry sweet and chocolatey Fizz amplitude: 0% Label/Marketing: Subtly vintage-industrial Would you buy it again? I never bought it the first time, but I wouldn’t hesitate buying it again!
Beer rating
The brewer’s website has this to say about Primator Double 24: Special Dark beer: Unique, difficult to classify into one of the beer categories. Extraordinarily strong dark-garnet beer with a distinctly sweet and full taste. Features a malt aroma with dominating tones of caramel, dried plums, chocolate, and a pleasantly subtle bitterness. Website: https://primator.cz/en/produkty/24-2/
Wot other’s say [Comments on Primator Double 24 beer from the internet, unedited] 🤔Sweet and noticable alcohol, but you can feel Czech pilsner taste a bit, which is a really original experience for me. [Comment: The man who was obviously drinking something that was completely not Primator Double 24] 😊 An exceptionally strong beer with a dark garnet color, a pronounced sweetness, and a full-bodied flavor, a malty aroma with dominant notes of caramel, prune, or chocolate, and a pleasant lingering bitterness. [Comment: And so say all of us!] 😘 Best damn beer in the Czech Republic, Primator 24 Double at 10.5%. It is strong, and it is sweet. I love it! Before Pilsner dominated the industry, starting in the early 1800s, all Czech beer was dark. How I wish that was still true. [Comment: Now here’s a man who knows what he’s talking about!]
History is always worth repeating if the bar is good
20 January 2026 – Yeltsin Forma Bars Kaliningrad: Many Happy Returns
No, of course it has nothing to do with birthdays, anniversaries or anything like that, neither mine, the Yeltsin’s nor Forma’s; it’s just what anyone who appreciates good beer and excelsior drinking environments does – they return, time and time again.
I wrote about the Yeltsin Bar and Forma in two posts and have to say that since I commended them, both for their beer and atmosphere, they still remain firm favourites of mine on the Kaliningrad bar circuit.
They, in Kaliningrad, will probably interpret this next phrase as being the opposite of complimentary, but, in the UK, we have an expression for such places: ‘spit and sawdust’. Although in these less earthy and more sophisticated days, be they ever so pseudo, such base terminology as this has likely been replaced by ‘designer-trendy laid-back interior’.
Yeltsin Forma Bars Kaliningrad
Call it as you see it; I’m a stickler when it comes to not liking change. For example, I am not quite sure why the Yeltsin scrubbed off or painted over its best example of ‘street art’ but retained its paint-spattered bog (that’s right, I said paint-spattered), but this anomaly apart, oh, and the loss of the classic jukebox, the Yeltsin in the character of its fundamentals, and may I say essentials, to wit, its rollicking beer selection and the lesson it provides in ‘how to feel like a student again even though you are past it’, render complaints null and void.
Meanwhile, next door, or as close to dammit as possible, Forma has done nothing wrong in my eyes, except, perhaps, to lose some of its furniture, or, if this is not so, to have removed what seems to be missing tables around the room’s perimeter, thus leaving the centre floor wide open.
I know what you are thinking: “What a pedantic old …”
I never got my Sherlock Holmes deerstalker hat for hiding my observations under a bushel.
There’s no connection whatsoever between that last remark and the one I am about to make, but in the artful world of pretext, I shall now go all transitionary on you – I blame it on those Coro jabs – by mentioning how extraordinary it seemed to be drinking beer in Forma, and very nice beer, too, whilst dining on sweet pizza.
This is a delicacy I can honestly claim to have never sampled before. I’ve got a good memory, sometimes, always where beer is concerned, but an imperfect excuse for one when it comes to remembering food, so I am unable to tell you with any authority whether the sweet pizza we sampled tasted of pear or pineapple, but, albeit an acquired taste, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Yeltsin Forma Bars Kaliningrad
I ventured a couple of beers in Forma, and they were on tip-top forma (I had to say it, didn’t I?), and no less can be said of the Yeltsin’s beer selection. Just look at that roll call of beers chalked on Yeltsin’s blackboard menu.
Enjoy the photos; enjoy the Yeltsin; enjoy Forma; go to both and enjoy the beer.
Below: Forma bar
Forma bar, KaliningradBeer, menu, liqueur and sweet pizzaStrange juke box?
12 January 2026 – Gdansk to Kaliningrad by Bus: Where’s that Bus Stop?
Once upon a time there was a bus stop, and once upon a time, this bus stop was not much different from any other bus stop. People wanting to catch a bus from this stop would make it their destination and, once there, would wait for the bus to arrive and stop, as that’s what bus stops are for.
Then came an event concerning a country not that far away which changed that bus stop overnight. It was still, for all intents and purposes, a place where buses stop, but nobody knew where it was and, even if they did, they had little idea of where the buses that stopped at the stop were going when they had finished stopping.
Ostensibly, this bus stop is just one of many sharing space with other stops at Gdansk’s central bus station, a horrid place by day, yet not so horrid by night, when, thanks to the action of darkness, it fails to offend one’s visual senses, not to mention imagination, to the extent of making you want to dash for cover, which, at the hidden, secret bus stop, there is almost as little of that as there are of other amenities.
The bus station’s information office is the perfect place for concealment. Like members of a certain ideological group, now consigned to history, they declare to a man and a woman that they know nothing, though to the innocent, untrained ear, the collective, official response sounds something very similar to “Don’t blame us, we’re just following orders!”
An attempt to uncover the stop by conducting an all-points bulletin search of the many and numerous bus bays using Shanks’s Pony is an unrevealing exercise that is guaranteed to leave you incredibly more annoyed and infinitely more frustrated than when you first embarked upon it, which is how, having fully exhausted ourselves, we arrive at the point of this post.
Gdansk to Kaliningrad by Bus: Where’s that Bus Stop?
Spoiler: In the unlikely event that you are one of those vaunted mythical heroes who would rather not know in advance that the travel arrangements for your journey are faultlessly prepared and who relishes, nay invites, as many opportunities as there are migrants in the UK to trip yourself up every step of the way, my advice is look away now! Missed it! There goes your bus! For I am, without compunction, about to reveal to you, the patient and tolerant reader, exactly where that Kaliningrad bus stop is; the one that you have been searching for, and on whose bus, when it pulls in, you will embark with satisfaction, and experience more of the same when, with you on board, it then pulls out.
This is what you need to know: The number of that stop is legs 11, or, without resorting to Bingoism, just plain old number eleven; and once again in numerals, memorise this: 11.
Calling all buses and passengers, be on the lookout for a place where buses stop in Gdansk that answers to 11.
Gdansk to Kaliningrad by Bus: Where’s that Bus Stop?
Don’t bother doing the rounds of Gdansk bus station again, or you’ll entice me to return to ‘ Once upon a time, besides, you’ll be doing yourselves no favours by scooting around the bus bay area. Number 11 isn’t there; number 11 is ostracised, pushed away, shunted off, singled out for special treatment, exiled, marginalised, cloaked, sidelined and generally put under wraps. In the best tradition of treasure hunts, bus stop number 11 is concealed at the side of the building.
The building to which I refer is that curious, old, crumbling, neglected, sad-sack sort of a place that goes by the name of Główny Bus Station. Sounds a bit like ‘Clowny’, doesn’t it? The building and its park look as though they were knocked up sometime in the 1960s during the concrete height of the Soviet era when that material was considered king and have sat there ever since, basking in the most glorious state of under-maintenance and slow decay. I quite like it for what it is, decaying, but just because I’m strange does not mean that you have to be too.
Come on, Gdansk administration, that’s a beautiful town you’ve got there; for gawd’s sake, do something about that urban eyesore bus bunker, preferably with the belated assistance of a large and heavy hammer. There’s got to be more to a building’s life than functioning for the purpose of spoiling the gateway to a wonderful city and obscuring for those in transit the whereabouts of the Kaliningrad bus stop.
A few months ago, it may possibly be more, for time has that unusual propensity to continually keep on moving, just to make finding the Kaliningrad bus stop that little more problematic, along comes some Herbert Kowalski and decides that he will revert the Soviet name of ‘Kaliningrad’ to its unpronounceable Polish ancestry, and so overnight Kaliningrad is hereon in referred to, if only in Polish circles, by the substitute name of ‘Królewiec. And it is this, for most of us, shocking tongue-twister which, for several months at least, gained something of a prominence in Gdansk’s bus-blighting city, with people when you asked them not knowing of Kaliningrad, even though it can be traced on every map in the world.
If they, the privatised companies that took over from British Rail, chose to refer to London as ‘Londinistan’, no one would blink an eyelid, for such a change would be self-explanatory, but going ancient with the name Kaliningrad, and bypassing Königsberg on the way, well, what a to do, I must say!
You know, it’s difficult enough should you arrive at the central bus station by way of the pedestrian underpass, for, as with the café that is no longer there, another useful facility that no longer serves its purpose is the lift. Thus, having climbed the North Face of the Eiger to reach the level where the bus departs, lugging with you your travel bags and later needing a truss (that’s not Liz Truss, by the way), the last thing you will want to do is run hither and thither around the bus park playing find the Kaliningrad bus stop. Suffice it to say then that magic number 11, being the stop which you are looking for, stands at the side of the building exactly where the bus bays aren’t.
You may be jumping to the conclusion that having found the stop, your worries have come to an end, and that you are home and dry. But sadly not, my friends; I cringe in telling you, there is more.
Generally speaking (and why not?), 90% of the buses leaving Gdansk for Kaliningrad come to rest at stop 11, but – and mark this if you will! – there is yet a 10% chance they won’t. Sometimes, for reasons inexplicable, they pull up at a stop outside the park on the side of the road. Not everyone is apprised of this, but standing at stop 11, if a bus rolls up across the way, its presence there is visible.
An occurrence of this nature is not liable to excite in the huddle of waiting passengers, who have already asked each other several times at least, “Is this the stop for Kaliningrad?”, an awareness of the possibility that the bus sitting diagonally opposite may, in fact, be their bus. Any sighting of a nearby bus should be treated with suspicion, immediately eliciting a “Could that be the Kaliningrad bus?” inquiry. And should this situation come to pass, my sincere advice to you is to cease asking the question among yourselves and toddle across the road as sharpish as you like, which is the same as saying with some alacrity, to put the question to the indifferent bus driver, who, whilst having obviously spotted you loitering at stop number 11, is not the sort of man who would quit his cab to tell you anything, forsooth seeming well determined to drive off with a bus as empty as the one in which he left the depot that morning. There is a phrase that is often used by inveterate, seasoned bus travellers, and that is ‘catch the bus’, which is better done, I’m sure you’ll agree, before its wheels start rolling.
A footnote to these proceedings is that the Gdansk bus bunker does possess one important, nay essential, facility, and that is a public toalety. Access to this delightful place is obtained by going around the bend; that is, the bend at the side of the crummy old building – left if you’ve got your back to it, and right should you find yourself facing it. Whatever you want to do in that toilet, it will cost you no less than 5 zloty, so be prepared and have it in hand!
Travellers not yet acquainted with Gdansk’s best-kept bussing secret, the whereabouts of stop 11, might discover some usefulness in consulting the photos below, which, I sincerely hope, will greatly assist them in their quest to catch that bus on time.
Travellers, please take succour from this aggravating pith: nothing in life is not without effort.
8 January 2026 – Art Village Vitland: beautiful beachfront on the Baltic
I was no stranger to this track; to call it a road would be too complimentary. I had walked it once before, but, on the last occasion of doing so, the going had been dry underfoot, dry and extremely dusty. Then the woodland to one side and the open, tangled ground to the other had been at their most verdant, densely leaved and vegetated under a sun-crowned clear blue sky.
Contrast that idyll with the scene that lay before us today: mud, potholes filled with water, the trees on either side stripped naked of their leaves, the woodland bed soaked and sodden, the air rich and pungent with vegetative decomposition, hanging as thick and heavy in one’s inquisitive nostrils as the accumulating droplets of damp clinging to one’s clothes. This was the natural world in its post-autumnal shift. A long, damp, desolate, barren lane, delivering us inexorably into winter’s clutches, or, dear reader, as those delicate poets amongst you might be inclined to say, for the sake of reviving a well-known phrase, into winter’s cold embrace.
The last time we had travelled this route, we had no strict idea where it would come out at, and thus we ended up somewhere else entirely; exactly in that not unfamiliar place, to wit, where everyone it seems, at one stage in their life or another, ends up inadvertently, and where some, as the story goes, end up not impermanently. You’ve probably been there yourself and hopefully returned: it’s called the ‘Middle of Nowhere’.
Today, however, with precedent as our guide, memory as our compass and others to consult with, there was little danger of that. It might have felt like the road to Nowhere, but it was, in fact, none other than the beaten track to Vitland.
Art Village Vitland
It was not yet fully past the middle hour of noon, but visibility, such as it was, and enclosed as we were by trees, was already turning mind and matter into a deeper and darker shade of grey.
A gaunt, tall and wooden monumental cross, unseen but pointed out to me, rising from an eminence, then suddenly turning eerily visible through a twilight web of branches, followed me down the slope, not the metaphorical one down which I have been sliding since the beginning of being trapped in this life, but a less-kind-on-the-soles variety, not the metaphorical souls which were soaring piously heavenwards in acknowledgement of this cross, but the ones that were having difficulty coping with the squishy leaves impairing traction beneath my boots.
The cross, I was told, I think by someone, was a monument to the martyred Adalbert, who long ago had journeyed to these pagan lands to convert whom he later discovered the hard way were an obstinate tribe of people, much the better to be left alone than lectured on Christianity. A delusion which might have turned out well had the subjects of his plan been desirous of such enlightenment, only, as bad luck had it, as it often does when callings of this type usurp the restraining influence of prudent commonsense, they were, unfortunately, anything but; and rather than be converted, they bumped him off instead. Such is the occupational hazard of devoting yourself to missionary zeal.
The morbid imp within me wanted to steer me into the trees and capture this cross on film – taking photographs is an inveterate habit that few can resist these days, and who am I to buck the trend – but as the light grew darker and the air considerably colder, owing, I convinced myself, to our nearing proximity to the sea, I meekly followed the others down, leaving the immortalised Adalbert to his eternal ruminations upon what in life is worth it and what on reflection is not.
A settlement of some considerable age
We were now approaching the ancient settlement, Vitland, escorted by its past but arriving at our destination as it is today. Landmarks, artistic ones, to which in an earlier time I had been graciously introduced, loomed larger than life in my memory. There again was the metal man conceived in his iteration from a carefully welded choreography of tubes, struts, plates, nuts, bolts, a number of other interesting things and a veritable maze of wires; the striking-a-pose arrangement of otherwise everyday wooden pallets; and the thrusting-upwards panpipes, for this is what I fancied them for, assembled from prodigious sheets of corrugated metal. And rest assured, it would not have been right had there not been a giant fish….
In any artistic environment, especially those by the sea, there’s always a painted fish – have you ever not noticed this? And so as not to disappoint, there it was alright, together with other colourful hieroglyphs, painted on the roughly hewn and unashamedly handmade fence. Through this delightful fretwork of wood knocked up from spliced branches and panels borrowed from various sources, a blazing fire burnt, and over it the smoke was rising, and on its other side the hummocky knolls and dells that comprise the Vitland café’s garden welcomed me from memory with the sight of the various wooden structures built into its contours, a novel collection of venues in which to eat and drink, to sit and smoke and barbecue, and dotted here and there and it seemed almost everywhere, for you never knew where one might be, yet more artistic symbols, which, when viewed in their entirety, converted this patch of grassy wilderness into a veritable home from home for the commune-minded boho set.
Like people whom you haven’t seen for as long as you remember but whose impressions you are likely never to forget, nothing was less familiar to me; but the devil, as they say, was in the detail, which, over the passage of our estrangement, had grown remarkably worn, taken on an aged appearance and was, for there simply is no kinder way to put it, succumbing to gentle decay. I felt a twinge of rheumatism emanate from my hip and was, by a mutual sympathy, consoled. It takes its shape from the march of time, and nothing, my friend, not even Botox, or anyone, be they so thought of by themselves and others as so powerful, has the will or the means to stop it.
Unlike the good St Adalbert, I had no need to prevent myself from converting anybody or anything. I respect Vitland for what it is and what it always will be: a genuine piece of Prussian history, which could have fared far worse in these overbuilt times of ours had it not been rescued from a fate worse than concrete when someone with taste and conservative vision decreed that it should become a unique and earthy retreat for the cohabitation of art and nature.
Bringing the two together within a sea-beach and rustic sequestered environment has turned the one-time ancient settlement into a rare fusion of space in which to exhibit art and to offer to the discerning guest a no-frills, honest-to-goodness blend of accommodation.
Accomodation at Art Village Vitland
Vitland’s guests are offered a choice of unpretentious hostel-style lodging in the main building’s loft rooms or a chance to stay glamping-style in wooden-constructed standalone units. I have seen the latter described as ‘bungalows’ and elevated as ‘guest houses’, but those descriptions are way off mark; they put me erroneously in mind of places of a quite different type, such as Auntie Mable’s house in Wigan and Mrs Musson’s Sandy Lodge at Wells-not-near-the-Sea, both of which in the strictest sense don’t fit the Vitland experience. I shy away from referring to Vitland’s ancillary lodgings as provision made in wooden huts, as it might evoke unhappy memories of that hard-to-explain and much-gossiped-of time when the wife, having locked you out, left you with little choice but to sleep in yonder allotment shed; so in search of a suitable substitute, I will christen these small wooden structures ‘chalets’.
Knowing what I’m talking about comes from having stayed in one. I entertain no delusions of tackling them in winter; such an endeavour as bold as that is the prerogative of constitutions considerably more adventurous and of greater durability than anything I own, but my summer sabbatical spent at Vitland some four years or more ago was memorably marked by a three-night stopover in one of these wooden units. The one we hired was fully equipped. It was wanting in no facilities. And as small as it was inside (it certainly wasn’t a TARDIS), nevertheless it was quaint and cosy.
The chalet slept two in virtual comfort: one, that is, at ground level, and the other, that being me, up a ladder and in the loft. On any other occasion, such as sedated by several beers, it might have been a case of out of sight, out of mind, but with the ambient outside temperature simmering not much far below a corking 30 degrees, inside our wooden abode, one of us was baking whilst the other one was basting. Being well skilled in the art and science of getting out of bed, certainly more than remaining within it, I was not surprised at all that I ended up at 4am perched on the chalet’s veranda, enjoying the thrill of the morning breeze whilst listening to the amazing sound of the sea crashing home on the shore.
Vitland’s principal hub, its rather more substantial building, is what traditionalists are likely to expect. Homely and inviting, it multifunctions perfectly as a café, restaurant, bar and sometime art exhibition space, and the rentable rooms above are all that the heart could desire.
Meanwhile at ground level, the eating, drinking and lounging area has a welcoming, laid-back vibe and, in line with the outside seating space, is decorated beachcomber fashion; for example, by hosting items and scenes nautical and marine in nature, with the wall at the back of the first raised deck draped with a sizeable fishing net, caught in which are colourful fish, humanely and strictly facsimile.
The second outside seating deck extending from the building offers an elevated view across a gorgeous stretch of golden sand into the foaming sea. At the furthermost end of this platform stands a convenient set of steps where you can descend yourself to the seashore or sit, as the mood so takes you, with a beer and a bite to eat whilst the mermaids sway seductively past en route to or returning from that sandy stuff on which, abetted by the laws of summer, they are pleased to set out their feminine stalls or emerging from that watery thing in which they swim and frolick, then glisten in the sunbeams.
Though naturally busier in summer than it is in winter, Vitland’s remote location makes it the perfect leisure alternative to the other hustle and bustle resorts. The beach is amber territory, the surrounding countryside is rustic-wild, the area is rich in history, and the aura is mystically tranquil. Vitland is a thoughtful place and is so during summer when it is occupied by more people and remains so in the winter when visitors grow less. It makes you put your thinking cap on when the sun is shining and leave it where it is when the snow is falling. I wouldn’t say Vitland can be lonely, no, I wouldn’t want to say that, but whatever it is that dwells there is a firm believer in personal solitude and a patron to all its excesses.
On the day of our most recent visit, I could not determine whether the irresistible feel of Vitland, its entrancing and enchanting essence, borrowed from The Shining’s least disturbing scenes, yet from its most evocative, or was rooted within a line or two I had read in James Hilton’s Lost Horizon. A proposed compromise could possibly be that the spell was a subtle coalescence of both confluent influences, with some magic dust thrown secretly in by a hyperactive imagination.
Those of you who are susceptible to what is commonly known as ‘energies’, those invisible peronalities demarking one place from the next, will understand instinctively what it is that Vitland does within minutes of your arrival there.
Within minutes of our arrival there, Mr Chileekin’s group, among whose lucky number I was one, was treated to an exhibition by the accomplished metal sculptor Alexsander Braga. I am tempted to say that overall I detected in his work the influence of steampunk, but in the likely event that my eye, as unaccomplished as it is, coupled with a marked lack of knowledge in such a specialist genre, should cause the artist to take exception, I will moderate my initial comment and rewrite it so that it reads ‘generates a steampunk interest’.
As with almost any art form, it is easy to overlook the complex interaction that exists between creator and creation. In order to appreciate if only the obvious intricacy of any metal sculpture, one is called upon to recognise the fine-line marriage between the inspirational impulse and the practical-technical skills required to bring the concept to fruition. It is not enough to think it through; the artist has to do it. He has to have in his possession knowledge, as well as a firm working grasp, of the processes involved and practical skills required in every applicable aspect, including cutting, shaping, fitting and the finishing in metal, of which there are many and various.
As an individual who realised at quite an early age that he was completely bereft of such talents and who chose to take a cookery course in place of doing metalwork when steered in that direction whilst he was at school and who received a clonk around the ear with a heavy metal saucepan from a hysteria-prone young lady teacher for cooking up something facetious, the extent of my appreciation for the properties of metal probably runs much deeper than the average man who works in a scrapyard and routinely feels the need to shout, “There’s a lot of metal here!”
There was not a lot of metal at the Vitland art exhibition, but what there was, was heavy man! I marvelled at the ‘Catherine wheel’ that symbolised the force of life, the public mask so universally worn and the sailing ship called Königsberg, but in the end, hands down, it was the mannequin that won me over, the symbolisation of female anger (I never asked if she once taught cookery or owned a heavy saucepan) which, at the risk of becoming fashionable by dint of alleged misogyny, pressed every button on my sniggering keyboard.
Sounding like Corporal Jones convulsed by a fit of “They don’t like it up them!”, the artist divulged to me that on acquaintance with his sculpture and its underlying meaning, there were women who became incensed not by the concept itself but rather by one aspect of the mannequin’s composition, which was its intimidating trumpet mouth. I was intrigued at this divulgence, for as objective as I was trying to be, the more I looked at this woman, the more the conviction grew in me that I had met her somewhere along the way; but then, along the way, you come across so many of them, don’t you? Quite unable to make up my mind about this female Plethora, I came away from staring at her with a second-best exultation, that of how much more disturbing her anger would have been had the master in metal who made her equipped her with two arms and hands and a pair of heavy saucepans. They say if you can’t stand the heat, it is best to keep out of the kitchen, and the kitchen is the woman’s place. Thus, if your problem is keeping out of it, you’ll just have to learn how to duck.
The heat in Vitland café met with no complaints, but on the outside the cold was taking hold, so I was not particularly peeved when someone interrupted the walk that we had been seriously contemplating, but which now would never take us along the spirited-windy seafront, by suggesting the time had come to make our way to Vitland’s main exhibition room. This apartment lies upstairs and is at the front of the building, but because of the lay of the land, with its different gradient levels, access to the room is via a short flight of steps located on the higher ground at the back of the building.
Vitalnd Art Village – a unique experience
On our way to the hall of pictures, I was reacquainted with further examples of Vitland’s garden sculptures, most of which I had shaken metaphorical hands with four or possibly five summers hence. Contiguous to this welcome went dramatically sailing past us, like a whisky-fuelled Hogmanay haggis, one of the biggest and fattest tabby cats seen this side of Wonderland. There consistently comes a time at Vitland when you forget which side of Wonderland your feet have decided they belong.
The exhibition laid before us featured a quite considerable canon of paintings by artist Alexsander Pasichniy, who has also written, illustrated and produced two children’s books and does a fine line in portraits of the German writer Hoffmann as he appeared in his younger years. The metal man, Braga by name, had not been a bragger by nature, and here we had yet another example of modesty becoming one, but when he unfairly denounced himself as not a professional artist, I couldn’t help remarking that “If this [your art] is not professional, then show me art that is!”
Would it be too pretentious of us, or judged as such by others, if, at what I consider to be a relevant juncture most opportune, we were to pause together and in that space consider how we relate to art and the value, or not as the case may be, that we accredit to it given the all-displacing digital world in which we have to live and which, in turn, lives in us?
We live today in an imagistic age, a period plastered in images. Thanks to the digital matrix in which we wallow and flounder – our smartphones, laptops, the omniscient Google and our slavish devotion to social media – we have the motive, means and opportunity to Blitzkrieg each and every facet of our post-Kodak daily existence with any image that takes our fancy. This explosion of the visual icon has the same effect on value as asking for a glass of water and getting a bucket of water thrown over you. Our eyes and our senses are soaked with imagery.
Outside of exclusive art-world circles, that self-imploding waltz occupied by cryptic critics and crusty connoisseurs, original works of art, those produced by the artist’s hand, are losing their authenticity to an authenticating culture founded on mass mediocrity. Our minds are sodden, sponge-like, with an overkill of imagery fed to us by a digital powerhouse that eschews the virtue of quality and espouses the glut of quantity.
The value of a genuine, that is, first-hand, work of art does not derive exclusively from the features of its composition, despite this being the principal force by which our inclinations are attracted to it. Intrinsically and essentially, other magnetic forces are at work behind the scenes acting upon our stolen sentiments, and these are those that cannot in any shape or form be forged or framed or fabricated, digitally or otherwise. They are so imperviously set in stone as to exist without fear of contradiction outside of the excluding scope of the critic and the connoisseur, for they are, indeed they are, the when and where and why and the ultimately by whom, and these things are immutable. There is nothing in the digital world that can replace the artist’s brush as it moves across the canvas at a given, single, specific and never-to-be-repeated moment, for it is what it is and when.
You now can see for yourselves that this is one of the joys of Vitland. It is without equivocation a thought-provoking place. In the sun at its most beautiful; in the eclipse of the sun, at its most introspective. It is natural, attractive, down to earth, a retreat into one’s own sanctuary; here you can escape for a while from the penny arcade of life.
It is also, and most essentially, the perfect marriage of art and nature, an intertwining timeless ceremony which never can grow old and where history can never repeat itself, purely because it has no need to do so. Some things, you can tell, have never not always been there, and once you have been to Vitland, you can tell that the same applies to you.
The Main Thing
Art Village Vitland Калининградское ш 43, Baltiysk Kaliningrad Oblast 238510
