Online Art Gallery

GUBIN came to artistic maturity before the social reforms of Perestroyka, at time when avant-garde art was relegated to surreptitious "apartment exhibitions" where painters dared show their work only to a few trusted fellow artists.

GUBIN's and others' calls for artistic freedom led to trouble with the authorities; he brought his family to New York in 1989 and became a U.S. citizen in 1995.

He is vocal in his appreciation of the opportunities that America has given him, and his recent turn to painting the streetscapes of Manhattan is very much as homage to his adopted home.

The works dating from 2004 - 2005, evidence GUBIN moving to ever-greater abstraction, with large passages of heavily textured paint (impasto) that are barely restrained by the horizontals and verticals of the cityscape.

Turning away from the overly-determined narratives of his earlier work, GUBIN is today moving toward ever-looser handling of his materials.

In pushing his paint to match the experience rather than the optical reality of the city, MIKHAIL GUBIN's search for the visual equivalence of urban immediacy will take him in uncharted directions.

His memberships include Audubon Artists Inc, Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts and Silvermine Guild of Artists.

I depict nature.

I depict objects and people.

Everything visible is the object of my interest.

For some time now, while working on my paintings, I've been striving for maximum emotional liberation; for an energetic, expressive art.

Mixing paint right on the canvas, I've been creating paste-like textural painting, trying to bring an element of spontaneous expression of feeling.

Often the object of my interest is Manhattan.

The City is full of colors and energy and can't be depicted in a realistic and literary fashion.

That is why I lean towards painting in a free-form abstract manner.

People, cars, houses, and ideas - all flow in space and time, changing, appearing and then vanishing.

It needs to be shown as a unique object on our Earth's surface.

Like a piece of a distinct object in our cosmic Universe.

2006

Blur, Silvermine Guild Galleries, New Canaan, CT

2005

Soliloquy, Cecelia Coker Bell Gallery, Coker College, Hartsville, SC

2005

New York Visions: Paintings by Mikhail Gubin, Radford University Museum of Arts, Radford, VA

2004

Gubin: A Retrospective, Joan Lukas Rothenberg Gallery and the Redhouse, Syracuse, NY

2003

Time Quilt, International Visions - The Gallery, Washington D.C.

2002

Transcendent Inquiry, Penn State Altoona College, Altoona, PA

2001

Contradictions, Silvermine Guild Galleries, New Canaan, CT

2000

Retrospective Exhibition, the Hoyt Institute of Fine Arts, New Castle, PA

2000

Paintings of Mikhail Gubin, Winfisky Gallery, Salem State College, Salem, MA

1999

Paintings of Mikhail Gubin Art Department, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN

SELECTED GROUP SHOWS (2004 - 2006):

Annual Open Juried Show, Housatonic Museum of Art, Bridgeport, CT

Boats, The Islip Art Museum, East Islip, NY

20th Annual International Florida Competition,

Florida State University Museum of Fine Arts, Tallahassee, FL

Artistic Fragments - Art 2005, Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY

2004/47th Annual International Exhibition, San Diego Art Institute, Museum of the Living Artist, San Diego, CA

Society of American Graphic Artists 71st National Juried Show, The Old Print Shop Inc., New York, NY

92nd Annual Exhibition, Connecticut Academy of Fine Art, Mystic Art Association Gallery, Mystic, CT

66th National Midyear Show, The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH

18th Annual Juried Exhibition, National Collage Society, Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA

Scene/Unseen, Eastern New Mexico University, Portales, NM

16th Annual National Works On Paper, The University Of Texas, Tyler, TX