Soviet dieselpunk: robots, Santa Claus, muscle cars and robots again (86 photos)

10 August 2019

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Category: Art and hand-drawn graphics, 0+

In his paintings, Andrei Tkachenko creates a bizarre world of the past future, where ordinary residents of the Soviet outback meet robots of all designs and sizes, as well as fairy-tale characters, like Father Frost and Baba Yaga with her Hut on Chicken Legs, or even aliens. At the same time, the artist’s world looks surprisingly authentic, as if all this really happened to us eleven years ago, but has only faded from memory...

The author achieves this effect by combining familiar scenes with the seditious “what if..?” So it turns out that the robot, in the company of three men, comes to the general store to take it for three, the robot with a “broken heart” is taken away on a tow truck, and instead of a soft toy, the father gives his son a huge Cheburashka robot. Masterful drawing, witty and sometimes very “subtle” humor, as well as descriptions that give the drawings phantasmagoric authenticity and are right there in the photo, form the artist’s unique style.

In some places, images aged to look like paper, coupled with poster captions and the use of familiar surroundings and landscapes, create an amazing sense of the surreal reality of what is happening, and the viewer is finally “confused” by the sudden appearance of all kinds of fabulous “flora and fauna” in retro-fantasy paintings. Santa Claus drives around in a muscle car, the dragon is mounted on the roof of the car like a flamethrower, Baba Yaga's hut comes out of the forest to refuel with diesel. Genies, mermaids, giants - you name it.

But Andrei Tkachenko’s “glues” of different realities look so smooth that they can easily be placed next to the famous fairy-tale and fantasy worlds of the Soviet writers the Strugatsky brothers in their stories “Monday Begins on Saturday” or “The Tale of the Troika.” In general, it seems that the artist’s works contain all the classic Soviet science fiction: from Belyaev and Bulychev, to Efremov and Snegov. One way or another, Andrei Tkachenko offers the viewer an exciting and amazing journey on which it would be a shame not to go...