Amelia Johnson Contemporary announces Konstantin Bessmertny: Clandestinum, a hard-hitting, crowd-pleasing exhibition of new painting and three-dimensional work. A technical impresario who underwent rigorous formal training, the works of Konstantin Bessmertny address the many absurdities of contemporary living and our understanding of history through lush paintings, thick with coded references and allusions to high and low culture. Bessmertny presents two very distinct series of works in this upcoming exhibition which continue the artist’s exploration of man’s tastes, foibles, dreams and fantasies conducted, as usual, with lashings of humour, irony, parody and satire. “In Rooms”, a series commenced in 2010, features humorous anecdotal dramas which unfold inside a room. These exquisitely rendered interiors are based on actual rooms in various European chateaus and palaces and provide the backdrop against which his solemn characters act out their roles, whether it is scolding an errant dog or galloping full tilt through a party. The artistic sources of inspiration are multifarious and multilayered: Russian icons, cartoons, ex votos, old master portraits, still lifes, trompe-l’oeil and allegorical painting (from Titian to Vermeer, the Fontainebleau School to Matisse, Bosch to Brueghel, and Chagall to Picasso). The second series of work presented in this exhibition is more complex to define and encompasses works on canvas, drawings, conceptual pieces as well as light boxes. Loosely grouped under a collective title of “Crash” these are large, darker works, often presented in a monochrome palette, of cars speeding through a bleak post apocalyptic world. Infused with text and smatterings of badly translated subtitles these moody works are juxtaposed by flashes of brilliant neon text and light boxes illuminating obscure corners of the plane. Bessmertny is a creature of boundaries between times, cultures and places. The effect is not lost on his works, which gleefully portray challenges of basic, almost universally accepted understandings of zeitgeist, history, and its heroes. Through his work Konstantin Bessmertny affords the viewer a delicious glimpse into a world that could so nearly exist and demonstrates, yet again, why he is one of the most exciting artists working in Asia today.