Art is not only the echo of the epoch and its mirror, but it contains the exiting prophetic energy, expanding with profundity. This idea of Vasily Kandinsky immediately comes to your mind, when you concern the works of Aslangery Uyanayev.
Aslangery Uyanayev was born in Nalchik on 26th of December, 1962. In 1985 he graduated from Kabardino-Balkarian University, the Engineering Department, and moved to Leningrad, where he plunged in the atmosphere of art. Being deeply concerned with painting, he began a course of study at the Academy of Arts. There he improved his skills, and started to blaze an original trail in art. Aslangery Uyanayev feels very close to the forms of ancient civilizations (Egypt, Assyria), probably because of its turn to eternity and the Absolute. The artist is drawn to the monumental significant tasks, which he sets himself in his creative work. Paintings of Aslangery Uyanayev present a kind of symphonic development of a picturesque theme. His main expressive means are colour, stain and plastic. Aslangery Uyanayev bases his works on the direct emotional influence of a colour, similar to the influence of a sound in music. The colour in his pictures consists of active contrasts. The painter is limiting his colour scheme intentionally in order to reach greatest expressiveness through the correlation and synthesis of light and plastic. The development of the colour and form creates a dynamic embodiment of the space in the painting. In his works Aslangery Uyanayev attains a counterpoint, the simultaneousresonance of several color tunes. With the help of contrasts and inner intensity the artist desires an incarnation of colour to form harmony. The picturesque wealth of his paintings is not the end in itself for Aslangery Uyanayev. His canvases are emitting the energy of spirit, derived by the artist from his dedicated attitude to the artistic work. Traditions of different trends-impressionism and postimpressionism - have been linked in his work, as well as there can be seen the influence of such great masters as Vasily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich. However, paintings of Aslangery Uyanayev are undoubtedly original, reflecting his individuality. The artist himself describes his painting as an associative realism. Perhaps we are present at the origination of a unique phenomenon in Russian avant-garde art...Irene Moskvina, art critic.1991
The works of Aslan Uyanaev lets us experience the plastic formulation of Petersburg culture at the beginning of the century, as well as independent reflection. It shows an intuitive sense, and a logical construction of the real colored embodiment of ideas regarding the space of Light and Spirit. The movement (from deep within the spectator) of the faint horizontal planes fortify themselves in the same sort of movement as the vertical, more tangible planes (from the bottom up.) Thus the flow occurs at the acceleration of one movement affecting the other, static color denied, and so forth. The artist achieves the creation of the hyper-movement of colored streams and weighted air. Precisely in this way, the works are created by the artist Aslan Uyanaev and are perceived by the viewer as Universal landscapes of aspiration. In his works are the declaration of the space of depth. The spectator senses the spatial influence opened to him by an artist of depth, and is overwhelmed by this very sensation....Maria Sheinina, art historian,1998
... In equal parts, he is interested in the mounted canvas, the balance of tradition contained within it, as well at in the performance in itself. The combination of the detached spectator and the provocation to act, seems strange only at first sight. In which field, Aslan does not play; he works to solve one problem. His performances are constructed on the dialogue of light and shadow. A floodlight in the eyes, diffraction gratings, the dancing shadow of a woman projected onto a screen, and music like pure emotion that of Kirpichi- from all of which elements an image is assembled. Flowing from the depths, a stream of light blocked with thick blotches of paint, in which every pure color is like a musical tone. This is the foundation of his every canvas. Light-shadow, calm-emotion, silent-explosive language, cold-warmth, sky-firmament: these are all in every work created by Aslan Uyanaev. In his installations, he uses newspapers; the banal bearer (if not the peddler) of information. Letters and figures in columns, surrounds us from all directions like bacteria. This raises the question what should we do: Give in to them? Protect ourselves from them? A labyrinth of newspapers, a chaos of communication. Losing ourselves in a field of indistinct information. Finding ourselves in spite of the aggression and the abundance of strange and alien consciousness. There are distinct variants of the theme in each specific event. The absolute philosophy is our relationship to the world...
The light, striking from the center of his canvas, is no different than the bearer of pure, lofty and grand knowledge, closed to the viewer as drifts of joy and despair, of commotion and detachment; the flow of ochre, black and red. The scandal of passion, of flesh, of life, layers of paint - at times chaotic. Still, behind all this, behind it all, a steady blue light-giving radiance. It is like floodlight on the screen, on which, due to the existence of this light, the shadows dance...
V. Drozd, Scientific Worker, State Russian Museum, 1999
