With the aim to provide local artists with a display platform to showcase the city’s latest artistic and creative productions, MAM has launched the Macao Art Window project, inviting six artists to showcase their works individually throughout the year. Featuring latest paintings and sculptures by Konstanin Bessmertny, this session inspires viewers with the sense of acerbic humour of the local Russian artist.

Konstantin Bessmertny was born in Blagovesthensk, in the former USSR, in 1964. It was at the age of 14 that he held his first exhibition, cementing his decision to become an artist. At the age of 20, he received formal art training at the Institute of Fine Arts in Vladivostok and participated in various contemporary art exhibitions besides his study. He graduated and became a professional artist in 1992. In the following year, he was invited to participate an exhibition held in Hong Kong and Macao, which has provided him a chance to settle in Macao and ever since he has drawn inspiration from the new environment that he found himself in.

This exhibition’s theme Times of Great Ignorance takes its inspirational cue from the ‘Dark Ages’, a historical period during the Middle Ages in Europe when cultural and economic deterioration occurred before the rise of the Renaissance.

In this exhibition, the oil painting Causarum Cognition Philosophicus draws its inspiration from The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael. In this painting, he preserves the background of the perfect Ancient Roman architecture depicted in the original. However, he replaced the philosophers and scholars featured in the original with modern sexy girls and casino performers, thus creating a clash with ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture.

His other work Bestiarium is a wooden sculpture in the classical form of a lion. He painted graffiti expressing a variety of contemporary scenes all over this exquisite woodcarving work, embodying the message of Times of Great Ignorance lingering on his mind with a stinging satire on modern issues.