Nestor Engelke
Painter, architect, woodcarving master, exhibitor and cofounder of North 7 art-group and gallery. He graduated from Repin St.Petersburg State Academy Institute of Painting, Faculty of architecture (2007) and worked there as an educator (2014).
The architectural theme which has its own special system of signs, is very significant for the inner world and works of the artist. As an artist of one medium Nestor works with wood as a sculptural volume and poetic image. He sees the wood as a material, as a living organism and important part of human daily life. Wood has become his artistic philosophy. Nestor becomes a machine for the production and search of images. To work with this material, Engelke developed his own technique - wood painting, which consists of using one of the simplest and most ancient tools invented by man – an axe and allows him to “draw” with it as with a brush. With the help of an axe, the artist attempts to free the wood from the flatness and display its unique sacral nature. In addition to wooden objects and installations, he is also engaged in performative practice; capturing his primordial and fading memories of Soviet childhood, artist produces witty pairs of meanings in the static objects and performative images. For Nestor, performance is a process of studying the materials: their resilience and ergonomic features.
