{"id":9476,"date":"2023-11-01T20:55:16","date_gmt":"2023-11-01T18:55:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/?p=9476"},"modified":"2023-11-02T00:42:41","modified_gmt":"2023-11-01T22:42:41","slug":"kaliningrad-gothic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/kaliningrad-gothic\/","title":{"rendered":"Kaliningrad Gothic in the Chimney Sweep’s House"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

It’s Gothic! But what kind? <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

1 November 2023 ~ Kaliningrad Gothic in the Chimney Sweep’s House <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s no spires, towers or turrets silhouetted against a full-moon sky above an impossibly craggy, precipitous cliff top, no sinister Baron Frankenstein or bat-metamorphosising sharp-toothed count, no film-set outsized lightning rod rising from the roof poised for that life-giving thunderbolt to kick-start the borrowed heart and incite the cadaverous limbs of a grizzly patchwork embryo ~ at least, I don\u2019t believe there is. But remembering where we are, within the eternal shadow of German K\u00f6nigsberg, there\u2019s more than a whiff of the Hoffmannesque both in Aleks Smirnov\u2019s chimney sweep image, as fabled in German history, and his Badger Club\/studio complex.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Gothicism<\/strong> that forms the basis of Mr Smirnov\u2019s public image (some would say his soul) and suffuses his club and art is a meeting place of invocations, each containing the traceable elements of folklore, legend, superstition, witchcraft, dark-side sorcery, imaginative tall-tale flights and dream-like childhood fantasy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His grotesque artistic compositions, sometimes risibly ironic, often tormented and twisted, always enigmatic, are an intercopulation of various Gothic sub-genres that attain apotheosis in the legend of the Green Man and the anything-goes enchanted forest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aleks Smirnov\u2019s world, let us coyly qualify that and say Aleks Smirnov’s \u2018artistic world\u2019, is a meeting of the ways; a rum place wherein the fantastic, unsettling otherness as explored in TV programmes like the 1960s\u2019 Twilight Zone<\/em>, 1970s\u2019 Thriller<\/em> and in fictional tales that you may have heard of, featuring  bespectacled Harry What\u2019s-His-Face, come together with Freudian fantasies to hold each other as if they are one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kaliningrad Gothic<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It is not by chance or accident that Alex\u2019s art is skewed by snatches or glimpses of something half-seen, sometimes almost invisible. For example, wall plaques of barely discernible faces blurring into and partially erased by stylised foliate overlays; mythological creatures, devoid of detailed features, ill-defined in form, swooping bat-like from daubed textured ceilings; the cruelly twisted disfigured face masks that impel you to put them on but more quickly to take them off;  the sack-cloth and ashes hessian gowns, lightly touched by tapestry and the heavier hand of superstition that dwells in ancient lore and in Little Red Riding Hood subterfuges, which help to conveniently explain away the dangers that lurk in dense, dark forests in terms of ghosties and goblins; the clumsily grandiose over-the-rainbow other-world helmets and repertory theatre gilded crowns ~ indeed, everything you’d expect to find in a parallel world of magic and sorcery, you\u2019ll find in the House of Smirnov.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Aleks<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And yet, viewed from another angle (and there are plenty of those in Smirnov\u2019s art) could they be distorting props taken from a surrealist film set, or things of which we never speak but which, both in our sleeping and waking hours, exists in each and all of our minds? Like the mirror of life itself, the shapes that we are permitted to see in Mr Smirnov\u2019s visions are a cradle to the grave experience where \u201cmore of madness, more of sin and horrors the soul of the plot\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the madness, if it exists, is not opaque. The House of Smirnov has many mirrors. And the sin is hardly original: pleasure is what pleasure does and has been doing since time immemorial. Like everything in the Chimney Sweep\u2019s lair, it may be in your face, but you can only ever really see it through the spectacles of your senses. It is a kind of delicious confinement and is all the more enticing for it! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for horror, if it exists, then this is the vaguest face of all. Now you see it; now you don\u2019t. It is easy to look in the mirror when you\u2019ve prepared yourself to see someone else, but which side of the mirror is throwing the reflection? As with E.A. Poe\u2019s mysterious Usher, the House of Alex Smirnov, could well be Smirnov himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kaliningrad Gothic in the Chimney Sweep’s House<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Personality is everywhere, and it runs through almost everything. Like a phantasmagorical current it links the disparate parts. Every shadowy, half-complete (or so we are led to believe), vague, ambiguous, ambivalent emblem, be it cast in the form of a bronze planished wall plaque, painting of a symbolic nature, surrealistic sculpture or just a gnarled, tormented, piece of driftwood rescued, sanctuarised and, once resuscitated, displayed in the most unaccountable place: never before has juxtaposition been so content and connected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Olga<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

At first such apparitions appear disjointed but thematically and psychologically a river runs through it all. It is as naturally unnatural as nature itself is truly unnatural, but it carries you into the Green Man vortex as effortlessly as a nursery rhyme: \u2018If you go down in the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obfuscating, sometimes suffocating, nature, whether human intrinsic or external organic, plays out its co-existence to interdependent extremes. It is the bogey man of sin, of guilt, stalking hapless generations trapped in the conscience forests of Nathaniel Hawthorn\u2019s mind. It is the temptress lying in wait inside her soft, inviting, secret garden. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kaliningrad Gothic<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

As in every game of chance, there is only one winner and that is the House, and this is no more certain than in the House that Aleks built. Whoever we may be and wherever we may be, victims are not spared, not even in Aleks’ toilet, especially<\/em> not in Aleks’ toilet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Draw back the crude and heavy, the clumsy wooden rustic bolt, pull back the fairy-tale door and off you go down Alice\u2019s rabbit hole. It is not a WC, unless WC means Wonder Closet; it cannot be called a lavatory, more laboratory of thought; and it is anything but a rest room, a testing room<\/em>, perhaps. In the strange, dramatic, dynamic department, an awful lot goes on in there, where functionally it shouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Gothic<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Quiet in place but oppressively loud in colour, spacious but confining, placid but somehow caught in motion, the only way of escaping is to obey the laws of natural contractions. Relax. Take a deep breath and let them push you headlong into the magic of the sweet little garden that lives beneath the wash basin. This illuminated scene, seen through moulded windows, begs for someone to come inside. Could England\u2019s Alnwick Garden ever be more beautiful, more graphically serene, more wantonly irresistible? Could it take you gently by the hand and lead you up the garden path as Aleks’ garden does?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Secret<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mr Smirnov is no mad scientist, and neither is he a bewinged count from an exotic fictious realm. He is a fabled German chimney sweep returned to Earth as artist. His residence and his club are not so much a turreted chateau or multi-faceted castle overlooking a bat-infested tarn but a playful topsy-turvy take on Germany\u2019s Gingerbread House. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Seen from outside, preferably at night, when cold and invaded with rain, the arched and crooked windows filtering light through panes of contrasting hue call softly to your childhood memories the ghouls and goblins of the Brothers Grimm, whilst below in the cobbled courtyard, headless female mannequins dressed like predator tarts prowl the streets of your later life reminding you of all the places where you said you\u2019ve never been.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Gothic<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Kaliningrad<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Mannequin<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The sinister woodland theme, wherein do dwell all kinds of elves and ghouls, replaces the streets beneath it. First, Aleks will put you in the club and then, if your luck is in, take you to places you’ve never been.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A tour of the chimney sweep’s backrooms, replete as they are with myriad props and costumes, all in form and nature an epitome of the bizarre and grotesque, is a Masque of the Red Death<\/em> moment. Within these bewitching antechambers, space ought not be compromised but the walls have a habit of closing in and the light, which filters, falls and falters in the taints and tints of the backlit panes, formulates the kind of seduction that Mother Nature would never condone, least not without a spiritual condom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the company of sweeps and badgers, you are given the chance to be anyone, everyone if you so desire, even those in your wildest dreams who you never thought you would be, which includes yourself if you want it that badly. Remember that classic scene in Patrick McGoohan\u2019s Prisoner<\/em>: \u201cWe thought you would be happier as yourself \u2026\u201d It\u2019s all part of the grand plan, the eternal trick, the fairy tale; the who is deluding who; the question where have I put myself? The self.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Aleksandr<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Aleks Chimney Sweep Smirnov\u2019s self is who he would have you believe he is and who you want him to be. It really is nobody\u2019s call but your own.  However, accepting limitations, it is futile to look for Horace Walpole, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker or any one of those Gothic guys and gals. He could never be that archetypal. And the place where he works, where he drinks, where he dreams is It. Here, there is no Baron Frankenstein, no graveyard afterlife embryo waiting perchance on that shard from the heavens to turn the crank on the sleeping heart, no long-toothed fiend in a bat-like cloak, no orgasmic sigh from the pit and the pendulum, but for all that Mr Smirnov isn\u2019t and for all his art and habitat is, even with gaps, it\u2019s Gothic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s call last orders, blow out the candles and say Amen to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright \u00a9 2018-2023 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where it’s at<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Badger Club Kaliningrad a Bohemian Night on the Tiles<\/a>
Made in Kaliningrad Exclusive Badger Underpants<\/a>
True Bar Kaliningrad the City’s Latest Music Venue
<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s Gothic! But what kind? 1 November 2023 ~ Kaliningrad Gothic in the Chimney Sweep’s House There\u2019s no spires, towers or turrets silhouetted against a full-moon sky above an impossibly craggy, precipitous cliff top, no sinister Baron Frankenstein or bat-metamorphosising sharp-toothed count, no film-set outsized lightning rod rising from the roof poised for that life-giving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9506,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[130],"tags":[2047,2044,2046,435,2228,2229,55],"class_list":["post-9476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-life-in-kaliningrad","tag-aleksandr-chimney-sweep-kaliningrad","tag-aleksandr-smirnov","tag-aleksandr-smirnow-badger-club-kaliningrad","tag-englishman-in-kaliningrad-russia","tag-kaliningrad-gothic","tag-kaliningrad-gothic-in-the-chimney-sweeps-house","tag-mick-hart-in-kaliningrad"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/DSCN1377-min.jpg?fit=1295%2C971&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7984,"url":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/badger-club-kaliningrad-a-bohemian-night-on-the-tiles\/","url_meta":{"origin":9476,"position":0},"title":"Badger Club Kaliningrad a Bohemian Night on the Tiles","author":"Captain Codpiece","date":"8 \u0434\u0435\u043a\u0430\u0431\u0440\u044f, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"I wasn't Badgered into going enough! Published: 8 December 2022 ~ Badger Club Kaliningrad a Bohemian Night on the Tiles My wife, Olga, went to a concert recently (see the photos below). 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It is a cultural treasure trove of historically overlooked, essentially undiscovered and\u2026","rel":"","context":"\u0412 "VISITOR'S GUIDE to KALININGRAD REGION"","block_context":{"text":"VISITOR'S GUIDE to KALININGRAD REGION","link":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/category\/visitors-guide-to-kaliningrad-region\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Polessk Brewery in the Kaliningrad region","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Feature-2.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Feature-2.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Feature-2.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Feature-2.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Feature-2.jpg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":477,"url":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/svetlogorsk-gothic-rauschen\/","url_meta":{"origin":9476,"position":4},"title":"Svetlogorsk Gothic (Rauschen)","author":"Captain Codpiece","date":"5 \u0444\u0435\u0432\u0440\u0430\u043b\u044f, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Rauschen (Svetlogorsk) Gothic Architecture This is one of my all-time favourite buildings in the Kaliningrad region\u2019s coastal resort, Svetlogorsk (German: Rauschen). Without genning up on its history, I would estimate that it dates to around the 1920s and is designed and constructed in a neo-Gothic style. The wooden cladding, turret\u2026","rel":"","context":"\u0412 "Kaliningrad Region Photo Gallery"","block_context":{"text":"Kaliningrad Region Photo Gallery","link":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/category\/visitors-guide-to-kaliningrad-region\/kaliningrad-region-photo-gallery\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/20200102_121900.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":352,"url":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/kaliningrad-the-secret-holiday-destination\/","url_meta":{"origin":9476,"position":5},"title":"Kaliningrad: Secret holiday destination","author":"Captain Codpiece","date":"19 \u044f\u043d\u0432\u0430\u0440\u044f, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"A City of Contrasts Preamble Before going anywhere today, the first thing we do is consult the internet. If you undertake ~ or have already undertaken ~ an internet search of \u2018Kaliningrad\u2019 chances are that you will turn up, or have already turned up, a disproportionate amount of negativity. This\u2026","rel":"","context":"\u0412 "VISITOR'S GUIDE to KALININGRAD"","block_context":{"text":"VISITOR'S GUIDE to KALININGRAD","link":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/category\/visitors-guide-to-kaliningrad\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/amber-jewellery-4.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/amber-jewellery-4.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/amber-jewellery-4.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/expatkaliningrad.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/amber-jewellery-4.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}