Studio Visit: Sasha Drutskoy

Is the phonetic link between the words “wander” and “wonder” mere coincidence? Wandering seems like the ideal way to break open linear logic and to meander, compelled by curious amazement, into side-roads that reveal a network of unsuspected complexity. At his stately home on rue de Verviers, painter Sasha Drutskoy (1963) cultivates this desire to wander. It is a place that is alive, where the gateways of possible worlds are ajar, and dusk can imbue the space with a theatrical atmosphere. “I like to just walk around the house, be able to wander. This place gives me the room to roam. It offers the right mind-set for those special moments where you can let the wanderings of your mind and your physical perception of space join together in funny ways. And that’s when you can really move into another dimension.”

Sasha Drutskoy was born in London, but soon thereafter moved to Brussels with his parents. With the exception of a brief period as a student in London, he has lived here his entire life. That is something that he, as a nomadic “hermit crab”, might not have expected. “Brussels is very much my home town. I think having children really grounded me in a sense. They are growing up now, so I don’t know, I might be moving on at some point, but I’m in no hurry. It’s true that you can come back from out of town and feel very irritated about lots of things here, but at the end of the day, it is this particular city that offers me the opportunity to live in this enormous shell.”

Sasha Drutskoy paints in the studio on the top floor of his house, but the whole house actually functions as a workshop and mental space. “The house is north-south oriented, and the studio is north, so the light is perfect for painting. I tend to use a traditional medium, it’s all oil paints, and I do things slowly. Once the daylight is gone, I can move on to something else. It’s a very natural rhythm. In this sort of funny isolation you can follow that natural rhythm without being worried too much about what’s going on outside: office hours, rush hours, street lights...”
In that intimate atmosphere, beautiful, high-ceilinged rooms lead into one another, and on the street side, there is space for a large table covered with drawings, books, and notations that play a game of mirrors with a painting he has brought down from his attic studio. “I tend to think in composition. I’m certainly not able to paint on the canvas straight away. I can only move on to the painting after the drawing, but it doesn’t at all mean that the painting will resemble the drawing. That’s the next stage of the work, which can lead you to quite a different place. But you have to go through the process. There are no shortcuts. The painting itself can be altered after a month or two, like the one I brought down. It’s really finished when somebody takes it out of here.”

In one of his most recent series, you see people on a stage watching what is happening in a painting on the wall or through a window – as the audience of a confusing spectacle that they themselves might actually be performing. “In that series I’ve been trying to combine the inner and the outer mental space and the inner and outer physical space, and seeing how they can be juxtaposed, how one can fit into another. It’s always to do with how different dimensions can cohabitate, and about those moments when things come together and you can move through passage ways from one possible world to another.”
Sasha Drutskoy’s paintings contain a narrative sensitivity that open the subjects and the medium up for expansion. His works are not so much narrations as revelations. They are not representations of reality, but quests for possibilities and truths hidden under the surface – a personal route leading to a panoramic view. “To me, painting is about coming to terms with very basic things, related to who you are. It’s just the way forward, the only path which you can take. And so painting is clearing out what’s in the way, in order to find that path. It’s like the fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel and the bread crumbs, only I tend to throw those bread crumbs ahead of me. My paintings are like stepping stones. The whole process of drawing and painting is just uncovering something which was already there somewhere. It’s uncovering the path which can qualify as a stepping stone. And then you move on.”

It is somewhat reminiscent of the conception of mythology developed by the Italian author Cesare Pavese: according to him, myths were capable of expressing, in only a few syllables, an essence of reality, vivifying and nourishing complex interactions of feelings – of human conditions. It is the essence of reality that lies at the heart of Sasha Drutskoy’s work.
Surrealism is a word that spontaneously arises when you look at the visual language of his paintings. Sasha Drutskoy most certainly explores mental boundaries, of planes of fracture where perception, imagination, and insight collide, but it is not the case that the imagination simply consumes reality unfettered. His threatening, almost apocalyptic scenes that confront little humans with the grandeur of nature, either animate or inanimate, suggest much about our and other times. “That’s really important. Very often there’s something escapist about surrealism, or at least the way it’s understood in an art-historical context. And I don’t feel I’m escapist at all. I’m a realist, in a strange way. I’m very much grounded in many ways in the physical perception of things. My dreams, my imagination, it is all very much linked to everything that’s going on around. I’m just trying to make all this fit together. I’m not too interested in the immediate surroundings, yet I’m standing on this ground. This is my age.” This metaphysical approach might be compared to a particular view of the ‘eternal’ water in a river, an archetype that recurs frequently in Sasha Drutskoy’s work. “The river is a good example. Waters have been flowing forever. It’s the idea of being on a bridge at one particular point and seeing it all flow past.”

It might be a tip for the wanderer: follow the water and you see everything flow past. One of the rivers in Sasha Drutskoy’s paintings lies at the foot of a hill atop which a naked man and woman lazily take in the state of the almost idyllic world. While on their right side, an inferno appears to announce the end of time, Adam and Eve laconically ask “What now?” In O & E, on the other hand, we see the most famous visitors to the underworld, Orpheus and Eurydice, who flee from a building with the ominous initial H. The “way in” on the façade predicts that Orpheus’ glance over his shoulder produces the famous result and he must get in his boat without his beloved. Humour pickled in purest darkness. “I’m glad you saw that. There’s nothing like laughter in the midst of the greatest tragedies.”
It is the laugh of men and women confronted with a world that is truly incomprehensible, absurd sometimes, and forever a mystery… Those people have started frequenting Sasha Drutskoy’s work increasingly often, and in a larger role. “That’s definitely something that has been happening. I’m not sure how and why, but my recent paintings are clearly more populated. These people seem to be coming out of everywhere. It’s a bit worrying... Whoops! Who are you?” (Hilarity) It might be exactly the right question.

Borough: Brussels
Main solo exhibitions: “Quant’è profonda la tana del Bianconiglio”, MC2 Gallery, Milan, 2011; “Giants, Goddesses, and Lesser Mortals”, Galerie Antonio Nardone, Brussels, 2011
Recent group shows: “One Man Show”, OFF-Art Fair Brussels 2012; “Anonymously Yours”, Maison Grégoire, Brussels, 2011; “Intersection”, Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels
Info : www.sashadrutskoy.net

Photos © Heleen Rodiers