Tag Archives: Kaliningrad Graffiti

Kaliningrad Artist El Kartoon

Let’s face it and the cost of fast food ~ Limitations and Silence by Kaliningrad artist El Kartoon

Updated: 4 October 2021 | first published: 28 July 2020

In my blog post of 9 November 2019 I wrote about an unusual art exhibition we had attended and how we had been seduced by a particular artist’s work. A couple of months ago, a number of artworks by this artist were up for grabs.

The artist, anonymous artist (nom de guerre El Kartoon) had placed a number of his works for sale on the internet and was about to advertise them via Facebook. However, before the works were posted on Facebook the exhibition organiser, recalling our interest in the artist’s work, emailed my wife, Olga, to ascertain if we were in the market for any of the pieces he was selling, particularly the half-face painted on metal substrate, as we had expressed an interest specifically in this item, together with another composition featuring Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins).

For a while, we ummed and ahhhed, as you do; Olga weighing up the cost of the paintings against the number of plants she could buy for the garden, and me, mentally converting the cost of the paintings into foaming glasses of ale. Eventually, we decided to compromise.

The painting we bought was that of the female face, or rather half a female face, painted not on board or canvas but on a sheet of rusty metal.

The painting in question, Limitations, certainly has an innate power. When I beheld it unwrapped and standing in the lobby at the foot of our attic steps I experienced an overwhelming and incisive sense of awe, which rapidly transmuted, becoming first privilege and then disbelief that we now actually owned this fascinating composition.

The artistic arrangement is simple but effective. The face has been painted on a metal sheet. The sheet is old and rusting. It has a turned edge on one side, suggesting that in a previous life it had an industrial-mechanical purpose.

The face is female and comprises exactly 50% of a full human face, the invisible proportion achieved by positioning the image on the extreme left hand-side of the substrate. Both the location of the image and the facial expression lends itself to the interpretation of peering anxiously out from behind something, in the way, for example, you might steal a glance from behind a half-opened door. The remaining portion of the metal base, approximately one-third, has been left untreated ~ rusting and tarnished.

El Kartoon ‘Be Seeing You!’ in our attic

I have suggested that the expression on the face betrays a sense of anxiety, to that can be added apprehension. The looker is uneasy, vulnerable. The one eye, brilliant blue, reflects something white and rectangular. The blue of the eye is as deep and beautiful as it is insistent; the glazed reflection upon its surface (could it be a window?) stares out at you above the dark well of the pupil, drawing you into its mystery.

Everything in the composition of the face itself, the broad, black serrated outline, the layers that form the contours of the face and the fine details, are jagged, frayed, fragmenting. There is nothing calm, nothing quiescent. Whatever it is that informs the expression, it is as unnerved as it is unnerving.

In this work, as in most of the artist’s works that we have seen, a striking and, I am inclined to believe, essential engine of the thematic enigma resides in the application of a curious overlay of geometrical lines. In this example, those lines are fainter than in his other creations and do not extend so definitely from the painting’s centrality into the outlying images or borders, but they are there ~ on the exposed and rusting metal and among the drizzle and daubed discolouration, the latter looking like natural erosion, perhaps from water exposure, as if, along with the fading black paint to one corner, they belong to the metal’s former existence, to its pre-artistic, functional and then discarded history.

To the beholder, these lines are key. They, above anything else, if there is, indeed, anything else, help to unlock all manner of ambivalence. But one is a constant, and that is that the lines emphasise connectivity ~ the inescapable interconnection between the realm of flesh and emotion and the hard, unyielding, material world to which, no matter how unforgiving it is, we are all hardwired.

Taken together with other paintings by the same artist in which this technique is employed, I am inclined to understand these lines to be not just an overlay on an overwhelmed human face extending outwards and then back again into and from the physical world but the circuit board of modern life, which speaks to us not just of hard engineering but in the technological idiom by which our life is controlled and defined ~ the ultimate interconnectivity from which there is no escape, at least not for us in our flesh and blood lifetime.

Given the nature of this unusual painting and its more than flirtatious relationship with negativity, I was surprised that it somehow fitted into Olga’s reality of butterflies, trees and flowers, but the mystery was made known to me when after voicing my confusion she declared simply that she did not find the composition unnerving. ‘Vulnerable’, yes; ‘unnerving, no’. Had she really failed to discern the connection between our vulnerability in this world ~ the world that others have created for us ~ and how this might be ~ indeed cannot be, anything else but unnerving?

I was pleased, however, that her second choice as to where to hang the painting, which was the kitchen, was discounted fairly quickly, not on the basis of my interpretation but, whilst she would not see the picture as often as she liked, on the wall at the bottom of the attic steps, which seemed to be the place for it. We agreed on this. It fitted perfectly. It was where it would have most impact without impacting mostly.

Anthony Hopkins

Since learning that Mr Anonymous’ paintings were on the market for prices we could afford, we had been arguing the toss as to whether we should buy another of this gentleman’s artworks, the one based on Anthony Hopkins’ fictional character, Hannibal Lecter, in The Silence of the Lambs.

El Kartoon's 'Silence' artwork — El Kartoon’s ‘Silence’ as seen at the 2019 art exhibition, Kaliningrad

We had negotiated a price for this second artwork provided we bought both, ie the half-face, Limitations, and Silence as well, and had just about talked ourselves out of it when our inquiries as to why there was a near identical painting masquerading as graffiti on a small brick utility building opposite Kaliningrad’s lake met with an interesting answer: apparently, the artist had been caught subjecting the aforesaid building to his aesthetic skills, had been summarily arrested and thereafter charged with vandalism. The case had gone to court but in conclusion had been dismissed*.

Kaliningrad artist El Kartoon — El Kartoon’s open-air work, sadly, since defaced*

*Note that this public stencil was painted over sometime in 2021 🤔

The artist’s compulsion to reproduce his painting as ~ ahem ~ an ‘urban art form’ had arisen, we were told, out of twin noble sentiments: a sense of civic duty and moral obligation. He had disposed the image where he did as a warning to young ladies who, reportedly, were apt to congregate there after dark to eat the stuff they had bought from a certain US fast-food chain nearby. The artist wished to say, ‘look out there are predators about’ and was not necessarily commenting on the quality, or perhaps the content, of what it was they were eating or who, in fact, they were buying it from.

The framed artwork has an interesting historical annotation attached to it in that it still bears the official tag it was given as a possible ‘exhibit’ in a court of law!

Bugger! We had to have it!

Olga beamed with delight when I suggested that she get on the blower right away and tell the lady in charge of the art exhibitions that we had decided to take it if the artist was prepared to wait for payment at the end of the month. She, the lady, opined that it was a matter of fate that we would buy both as we had expressed such interest in them when first we saw them at the exhibition. Like Olga she believed that we were meant to own them. And I believe they were meant to own us.

El Kartoon’s ‘Silence’ displayed in our attic

Further information on the artist and artist’s work:

A comment from my wife, Olga, on her Facebook account
Mick and I bought these artworks just because we like the feel and amplitude. They call the artist the Russian Bansky, because of his distinctive stencilling technique. His works have been featured on the streets of Kaliningrad. I wonder if he will sell the copyright? When he is as famous as Bansky (and I believe he will become so one day, as he has talent), his public ‘installations’ might be sold by removing the walls they were painted on!

Notes from the art exhibitor’s website [link no longer active as at 12/04/2022] Art Space Gallery
El Kartoon, artist
The main direction [of his work] is stencil graphics aspiring to painting. The works reflect the desire to reflect fundamental values, feelings and social problems through the prism of our digital age. Contemporary, about contemporaries, for contemporaries.

El Kartoon
And now in Russian …
Основное направление – трафаретная графика стремящаяся к живописи. В работах отражено стремление отразить некие фундаментальные ценности, ощущения, социальные проблемы сквозь призму нашей цифровой эпохи.Эта живопись – отражающая современников, о соврем…

El Kartoon
EL Kartoon начал рисовать граффити в 1998 году. С 2002 по 2009 год был творческий перерыв. С 2009 года работает в трафаретной технике.Единственный Российский художник, который представляет трафаретную графику на международной арене, в частности на крупнейшей международной выставке трафаретного искусства Stencil Art Prize, Sidney, Australia, а так же является участником The Kutz, Bristol, United Kingdom

О работе «Молчание…»

Причиной создания работы послужило случайное наблюдение за ночными “обитателями” парковки, которые в ночное время едят там Макдональдс.В процессе создания картины на стене близлежащего здания автор был арестован и доставлен в отдел милиции. Часы, которые должны были показывать время – 18:00, сделать не получилось, но благодаря этому работа получила “новую окраску” и новый смысл.

O работе” Limitations”

Металл – это ассоциация художника с окружающим миром. В работе “Limitations”- человек в какой то степени заперт, в какой-то степени ограничен. Эта работа является одной из серии уличных работ на тему “цифрового человека” – современного, технологичного, оцифрованного и запущенного в сеть, в тираж, и как автору казалось в процессе над работой – это время наступает стремительно. Недавние законы, принятые в Москве, подтверждают “теорию цифрового человека”.

And now in English …
El Kartoon
The only Russian artist who represents stencil graphics in the international arena, in particular at the largest international exhibition of Stencil Art, Sidney, Australia. He also participated in The Kutz Exhibition, Bristol, United Kingdom.

About the artwork Silence
Silence came from the accidental observation of the night ‘inhabitants’ ~ the young who congregate in the parking area close to McDonald’s to consume the food they purchase from the fast-food chain.

In the process of the creating the stencilled work on the side of a building close to the parking area, the artist was arrested and taken to the police department. The clock, which was supposed to show the time, 18:00, was not finished, but thanks to this unfinished touch, the work received a ‘new colour’ and a new meaning.

About the artwork Limitations
El Kartoon writes: “Metal is my association with the outside world. In this case, the subject is locked to some extent, to some extent limited …”

Limitations was a series of street works on the topic of ‘digital man’ ~ modern, technological, digitised and launched into the network, in circulation and so on. At the time when the work was being created, it seemed to the artist that the time of the ‘digital man’ was rapidly approaching. Recent laws adopted in Moscow suggest to the artist that the time of the ‘digital man’ has come.

Kaliningrad a Green City

Diary of a Self-isolator: Day 65 [23 May 2020] ~ Trenches & Trees

Published: 23 May 2020

Unlike in the UK at present, there is no sudden uplift in the weather, nothing to tempt and entice one to cast caution to the wind and go wassailing off to the coast, but we were blessed with a gradual hike in temperature, somewhere around 15 degrees, and this blessing, together with a light breeze in association with Mr Blue Sky and a sun that had its hat on at last, were altogether alluring enough to winkle me out of self-isolation for the novel pleasure of stretching my legs.

As part of our exit strategy, we first had to run the gauntlet of passing without mishap from our garden to the road beyond. For the past three to four weeks, our house, and those in the immediate vicinity, have been subject to what I have christened in my diary ‘trench warfare’.

The Trenchmen cometh … I can’t help thinking that we would have been better laying that new block paving later …

Cable-laying has been going on, and a narrow but deep trench, deep enough to dislocate or break should a wrong step occur, dissects the pavement at the front of our abode and at right angles to it, extending along the neighbours’ boundary to the gate at the end of the cul-de-sac, behind which sits a very large dog.

From the vantage point of my bedroom window I have been able to observe (intermittently, you understand, as self-isolation has not left me wanting in occupations of an interesting kind) this work in progress and to chalk up the differences between how a job of this nature is handled in Kaliningrad compared with its UK equivalent.

From the outset, and for most of the work period, the construction crew consisted of three lads and a young woman, armed with a couple of spades, shovels and a wheelbarrow. The young blokes did most of the digging whilst the young woman, with her workman’s gloves tucked professionally in her back pocket, appeared to have an overseeing role, an inference corroborated later when a clipboard appeared in her hand, but praise where praise is due: at one stage in the game, she too rolled up her sleeves and took a turn on the shovel.

Considering that there were at maximum four workers armed with nothing more mechanical than their arms, they did pretty well. Weather conditions ~ lots of rain ~ were unsympathetic, but after a week’s hiatus the original band was joined by a veritable armada of labourers, who were not only trenchers but also there to lay the cables which, as with the aggregate, had been dropped off on the central island ~ a grassed oval section of land in the middle of the thoroughfare overlaying a German bunker built in World War II.

The temptation to go off at a tangent at this juncture and elaborate on the many surviving monuments to WWII that exist in Kaliningrad and the surrounding region is difficult to resist, but as global tourism has yet some way to go before it can get off of the back foot of coronavirus, I will focus for now on my outing.

Kaliningrad a Green City — Green & cobbled streets of Kaliningrad

We had crossed the trench and this accomplished were now walking along the original cobbled streets of Königsberg. Victor Ryabinin, the artist and historian, had assured us that ‘green’ Königsberg was a myth. Königsberg, at least the oldest parts of the city, was never green. The streets were narrow, the buildings high and brickwork and cobbles had been the order of the day. The outlying districts, the suburbs laid down in the early 20^th century and developed in the 1920s through to the mid-30s, had been designed with green in mind. The houses and the plots on which they stand have their equivalent in England’s 1920s’ suburbs, where homes were sold on the back of the catchy and appealing advertising slogan, ‘A country home in the city’, or words to that effect. Every home in these outlying districts had a small front garden with a larger plot at the back, and on the streets where these airy new houses stood trees lined either side augmented, where space allowed, with a neat grass verge between the pavement and the road.

Nevertheless, as photographs and postcards testify, though most of the streets in Königsberg’s expansion districts were avenued with trees, they were, of course, saplings, newly planted. In their day, they would have formed graceful vistas but with nothing like the leaf foliage that adorn those selfsame trees now that they are mature.

You see, this is what happens when you self-isolate: everything, every simple detail, every once commonplace and taken-for-granted minutiae undergoes an amplification process, so acutely rendered to senses locked indoors that before you can safely say facemask you cannot see the wood from the trees ~ or, in my particular case, the trees from Kaliningrad’s leaves.

No matter; we had now crossed the road, just in front of that peculiar waterside café, that abandoned monstrosity which, with its fake lighthouse, Captain Ahab perched on the roof doing something over the side and a lot of marine-like crustaceans daubed upon the walls, resembles something sneaked into Russia from an amusement park in Skegness.

I have seen postcard photographs of the building that stood here originally. Admittedly, it, as with the lake and everything around it, was monochrome ~ they obviously did not experience bright sunny days in the early 20^th century ~ but even though the world then was black and white (as things used to be black and white before coronavirus) the Konigsberg building had all the ennobling features bestowed by Gothicity and was, in its setting, a sight for sore eyes rather than a sore sight for tearful eyes, which is as good as it gets today.

Kaliningrad a Green City

Passing quickly by this ‘thing’, we wended our way, more happily now that it was behind us, along the block-paved path that runs around the lake perimeter. Old photographs show that the lakeside (apologies purists, I mean, of course, pond sides) had banks well stocked with natural vegetation, and trees abounded plentiful. In a black and white world some details are lost ~ atmosphere reigns supreme, but some details are lost ~ but in the photographs that I have seen of this area, it appears as if a small winding pathway, most probably gravel surfaced, curled through the trees at the edge of the lake in the early 1900s. This track has subsequently been lost, replaced through a gentrification process by block paving typical both in colour and character of 21^st century urban design. Much of the original foliage, by that I mean the wild and natural, has been dug out and substituted with mown greens and municipal flowerbeds, but although block paving in all its imaginative shapes, patterns and sizes, along with children’s’ play parks, public lavs, and even an exercise quadrangle has colonised what used to be, the Königsberg trees that line the side of the road and the odd gnarled or venerable specimen dotted amongst the newer plantations, some Soviet others millennial, contribute in this neck of Königsberg’s woods to Kaliningrad’s attribution of being a very green city.

As much as I was enjoying and being distracted by that which I am phenomenally good at ~ mental rambling ~ we were on a mission, and this meant putting my tree-hugging propensity on hold and focusing for a moment on finding a wall with graffiti on. Not that this endeavour would be difficult in Kaliningrad. Sadly, graffiti is another of those unwanted imports that has made its way from the West.

Mick Hart with Anthony Hopkins in Kaliningrad

The graffiti we were looking for, however, was not one of your run of the mill deface, vandalise, degrade and then aggrandize as ‘urban art’ jobs, it was truly an original piece, a real work of art, featuring none other than Anthony Hopkins in his role as Hannibal Lecter ~ but more of that on another occasion. We found what we were looking for, and my wife made good with the camera.

Kaliningrad: Not all graffiti is equal — There is graffiti and graffiti …

Work of an anonymous but talented Kaliningrad artist — Mine’s a vegetarian

“For old times’ sake,” that’s what my wife called it. I wondered what she was asking me?

She wanted us to walk closer to the lake, taking in Flame restaurant as we did so. The ‘old times sake’ was a reference to recent history, which, in the New Normal, is as lost to the world as dinosaurs. Aahh those glorious days ~ so happy and carefree ~ when we would walk to Flame on an afternoon or evening for a meal and a pint of brew. What had become of them and will they ever return?

Like every other pub/bar victim of coronavirus, there stood Flame, dark and extinguished. However, a nice touch, and a reassuring one, was that in keeping with its tradition Flame, although closed to the public, continued to play music through an external speaker system situated on its alfresco area. It was more like an overture of hope than the band playing on as the Titanic hit the watery skids.

Now that the shops ~ some of the shops ~ had officially opened their doors again, we had a small errand to do. As we crossed the road from the lake, emerging at the side of Flame, it was evident that whilst we had been hibernating Kaliningrad’s construction workers had not: the new shopping centre at the end of the city market had gone from being a shell of incomplete concrete pieces and knotted wire to a three or four-storey series of profiled platforms. Ordinarily, back in the days of the old normal, something like this seen on a day-to-day basis would have excited little more than a passing glance, but incarceration, whether self-imposed or not, has a sharpening effect on the mind, so much so that in looking on this building, at its Phoenix-like transformation, I felt a kindred spirit in Rip Van Winkle at the moment of his awakening.

Errand done, we set off on our homeward journey not by retracing our steps ~ I think having to pass Flame again would be more than the drinker in me could stand ~ but with a view towards returning on the opposite side of the lake. This route took us to the busy crossing in front of yet another landmark bar, the one housed in the historic Rossgarten Gate ~ CLOSED!

Luckily, by way of distraction, on the opposite side of the road, on one of Kaliningrad’s large, open WWII monument squares, I saw a man with his hose in his hand. He was leaning nonchalantly from his truck window, playing his hose over some of the prettiest city flower beds that you could possibly imagine. “Hmm,” I thought, “It’s not only the bars that are dry.”

Watering the flowers in the green city of Kaliningrad — A lovely day on which to have your hose out

Kaliningrad a Green City

Our walk back around the lake was a pleasant detour. There is only so much of novelty in strolling back and forth day and weeks upon end from your kitchen to the living room, and, let’s face it, though unarguably indispensable, the twin water features of bath and bog hardly compete or come close to the natural scenerific beauty imparted by rippling lake under a clear blue sky. And you can be sure that, as on the other side of the lake, there were trees in abundance here and in such variety and of different ages that I amused my obsession for the past for a while in attempting to determine which of the trees had been planted in Soviet times and which belonged to Königsberg.

The wise old trees of Königsberg-Kaliningrad

Trees, lakes, shopping centres rising from out of the ground like mysterious midnight mushrooms, men with their hoses dangling quaintly out of truck windows, a light breeze, a blue sky and off to the shop to buy some tomatoes. Very nearly back home, just now the trenches to cross.