The idea that the modern era is unable to speak the language of visual arts, more specifically, the language of painting, is widespread throughout the modern cultural studies. Zlotnikov’s works over the last ten years could serve as an interesting counterargument to this commonplace assertion.

His tiny pictures arranged into large series could be interpreted as innumerable diary entries made by an artist engaged in a daily dialogue with reality. These “texts” don’t comment on reality, however . Unlike most contemporary art pieces, they can’t be reduced to some anecdote or metaphor. His “notes” might sometimes be illegible and obscure, but in the end they always produce an independent, consistent text in which the author converses with the world and ends up becoming one of the voices of this world.  As grandiloquent as it may sound, these visual pieces are like poetry that dismantle “chunks” of everyday language and produce an illegal, unconventional reality that is the only reality able to give rise to a human being.