EARLVILLE – Russian-born painter, Mikhail Gubin, opens his exhibit of oil paintings in the East Gallery at the Earlville Opera House Art Center this Saturday. The exhibit titled “Endgame” will remain at EOH from Oct. 6 through Nov. 10. Join us on Saturday for an opening reception from 6 to 7:30 p.m.
Mikhail Gubin was born Kharkov, Ukraine – a part of the Soviet Union in 1953. Gubin taught himself to draw and paint by visiting museums and interacting with other artists. He and his non-conforming artist friends were part of underground “apartment exhibitions” when their work was banned. When Perestroika occurred, Gubin was allowed to exhibit at the Kharkov Art Museum, but further opportunities were limited. He began to try to emigrate but was detained. He organized hunger strikes and rallies and was arrested. In 1989, he successfully immigrated to the United States. He became a U.S. citizen in 1995 and is a member of the Silvermine Guild of Artists. In their 50th Anniversary Art of the Northeast USA Show, he was named Best in Show. William Zimmer of the New York Times said of the honored piece, “Neighbor’s Baby” is “an emphatic figurative work aspiring to monumentality.”
Gubin states: “In my work, I’m trying to create an atmosphere of mystery, paradox and dark metaphor in an impossible inquiry into unanswerable questions.” Martin Parsons of ARTspeak describes Gubin: "...He is a superb colorist, capable of a subtlety and tonal poetry rarely seen in recent figurative art. Yet, it is his talent for concocting peculiar situations and somewhat bizarre permutations of people, animals, and objects that makes his composition so compelling."
