NIKITA

KOSMIN

Nikita stands out not only because he’s a gifted painter, but also for his vision. The things he sees are not always beautiful. Their characteristic features are violence and darkness, but there is room for humor and hope. Born in 1988 on Volga-River as the youngest of three siblings, a son of a working-class family, he has emerged as if from his own pictures. Growing up at the time of Soviet Union collapse, he saw his life in the dark facets of hopelessness and lack of perspective that surrounded him. With his family's departure for Germany in the late 1990s, the young artist's life was increasingly shaped by the lack of belonging, incomprehension, being not understood, and finally by the language of violence. Only through painting, which had always accompanied him through his life, he found a form of statement that gave him an ability to better express what he could not put into words. The shadow worlds of the past and his immediate life reality stand out today sometimes cruel and gloomy, sometimes colorful and humorous in his works. The works do not have to please. They show perspectives. Images. Snapshots.