Vladimir Kush Lahaina, HawaiiKathryn Tindall

Vladimir Kushs exhibition in Lahaina, Hawaii is overall a very impressive selection of paintings and 3D pieces of art from this Russian surrealist artist. The busy street filled with restaurants and bars surrounding this gallery mean that you are hit by a peaceful and calm atmosphere when walking in. Every piece has a story and meaning behind it and his art work displayed here are full of metaphors for real life situations or messages.The exhibition is set up into corridors, with his artwork on the walls, leading off to small rooms that contain further paintings and sculptures. The initial space is a large rectangular room that has been split up by partitions making the exhibit easy to walk around and allows space for you to stop and look at, contemplate and appreciate his work in a laid back way. The art is displayed in an obvious way and some of his ideas and images could be seen as intimidating or daunting as they are so bold, but the corridors and lighting used makes this large bold exhibition seem intimate giving the impression that each piece has been stumbled upon and you are the first to discover it and it has been laid there just for you.When walking through the exhibition and looking at his art work a recurring motif that can be seen throughout his paintings is the human figure, which helps to reinforce the different metaphors trying to be conveyed by linking it to everyday situations. He reintroduces old ideas from previous pieces of work into other ones and so when walking round looking at the paintings and sculptures you start to notice that you have seen that face in a previous painting or the flame with the person in the wick for example. Because of this you find you are not only observing these pieces- you are searching them too, looking for familiarities and things you have seen before. This is very clever as whereas with some artists, work can be just glanced at or walked past, Kush almost forces the onlooker to take time out and look at the whole of each painting section by section as you dont want to miss any tiny detail.Most of his paintings incorporate nature into the theme, whether fruit, trees, flowers or some form of animal or insect. He takes something ordinary and plain such as a dandelion seed head and gives it a wistful edge by giving the floating seeds the shape of a human holding on and flying away. I really find his ideas very interesting and the way the whole exhibition is laid out forms a story of the artist himself. Following the corridors filled with his whimsical paintings and sculptures the journey made by Kush takes shape in the eyes of the spectator. African Sonata

This piece called Beeing a Tiger is trying to show how even the smallest of things can defeat the mighty. Bees and tigers have similar appearance in colour e.g. the stripes however the difference in size sets them apart. The bees when unified by instinct, become and unstoppable force able to chase down the predator. It is a metaphor for life and the constant struggle of the persons will and purposefulness against a plenty of tiresome cares surrounding them. This is an example of how he incorporates his messages into his artwork.His work is in a variety of sizes from extremely large canvas to miniscule sculptures. This diversity really makes this exhibition a pleasure to look around as even though you may look at a piece and it have similar characters or motifs to one you have just looked at, the difference in size of the piece completely alters the perspective, morphing these same familiar creatures or ideas into something completely new in front of your eyes.This sculpture is called pillow book and was one of my favourite pieces displayed. I find it so lovely to look at, as it gives me a feeling of escape. I think this way as the combination of the book and the bed gives me the sense the figure is dreaming rather than just sleeping. I feel this piece is trying to show that stories are just like dreams that have been written down and when either reading a book or dreaming/ sleeping you are free from the outside world and part of something completely different and your own.I very much enjoyed walking around this exhibition but if I had to criticise the artist at all it would have to be that although I find it intriguing how each piece has a message I found some of them a little farfetched and even pretentious at times. Whether it was the messages themselves or the way the members of staff walked round forcing these messages and meanings on you as you tried to look at the artwork I do not know but that is something I did not enjoy about the time I spent in this exhibition. However, the quality of his work cannot be denied, and the way some of the pieces make the onlooker stop and stare with wonderment can only be admired.