Andrey Kartashov, Last Call of Darvin.., 2023, Giclée Print on Canvas

That was during the last century that futurist writers predicted the onset of the “cyber-south” era. Artificial, computer intelligence, which got out of control and declared war on the creator, became a favorite plot of science fiction writers of the 80s and 90s, resulting, in particular, in the cult film version (the epigraph to the first part of which is indicated in the painting). The future has come and the prophecy has been fulfilled. The war between people and machines has been going on for a long time, but not by the use of combat drones and cyborg soldiers. Skynet, sitting astride the Babylonian Matrix, imperceptibly began the battle and quietly won it, inscribing the IP address on everyone’s forehead and hand. Darwin’s android monkey named Charon takes daughter of man away into the wilds of the Cyber Neolithic, into the caves, where there is nothing left to do but to timidly cling to the cold flickering of the screen of an electronic gadget. One can hear measured splashing of the Lethe’s waves against the side of Blake’s boat and the many-voiced zoom of ringtones buzzing “The Ode to Joy”, in which the notes of the funeral march for humanity have long been detected… 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: 121 cm Width: 91 cm