Andrey Kartashov, Carrying the Baobab Cross, 2023, Giclée Print on Canvas

The idea of ​​a person’s life path in the context of the biblical maxim: “for each will bear his own cross”, has been reinvented through the prism of mass media culture. The postmodernist appeal in an ironic key to eternal themes and timeless plots. Again, the main character is the on-screen symbol of the era. The picture is based on the iconic scene where this character is with a log on the shoulder, replaced by a cross symbolizing his three life stages – sports, cinematography and political career. The artwork is rumination on the sacred personalities of the era, serving as idols and at the same time conceptual shelters, like dwellings in the trunk of a baobab, erected even today by primitive tribes. Who are they – idols being saturated or bodhisattvas who out of mercy voluntarily stepped into a new circle of samsara? What is their life path – a monument to the glamor of the possible, a hymn to the exercised right to the claim-demand, or a heavy cross? Who is the Great Man bearing this cross and the Little Man huddling in its shadow? Andrey Kartashov graduated from the A. Erdely Professional College of Arts of the Transcarpathian Academy of Arts in Uzhgorod, and later graduated from the Department of Painting of the Repin St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. Since 2007, he has been a member of the Portrait Painters Association of America (PSA), and in 2016, he joined the Union of Artists of Russia. His works are represented in the collections of the Research Museum of the Russian Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, Tianjin Museum, and Liu Haisu Museum of Art in China, Arnold Schwarzenegger Museum in Austria, as well as in private collections of collectors from Russia, the UK, the USA, China, Ukraine, Poland, France, and the Netherlands. Produced using more forward-going technologies like the Metis scanner, which allows for printing out excellent quality art pieces it becomes a high-class, exclusive art piece. Height: 135 cm Width: 95 cm