Vitaly Pushnitsky is a renowned artist from St. Petersburg. Graduate of the Academy of the Fine Arts, he’s a true master of various techniques, including traditional painting, drawing, sculpture and contemporary media technology. Phaidon, a British art publisher, put him on the list of 115 artists shaping the future in painting. Pushnitsky’s works have been acquired by both state and private collections.

October 28 Vitaly Pushnitsky will join the Unuseless Person Project and try on the role of a street artist in the square by Manege’s western facade. The project brings in eight street artists that have decorated the concrete columns by the exhibition hall. The ninth column, the so called “extra and useless” one, was put aside and remained untouched. The audience was offered to contemplate over its symbolic meaning.

Pushnitsky's street intervention is his take on the “extra” column riddle. He will present his own interpretation of this eternal argument between the old and the new, the traditional and the unconventional.

Vitaly Pushnitsky believes this argument is not really appropriate, as the borderline between the classics and the new has long been blurred. All artists are part of the same image space: they contradict and learn from each other at the same time. Pushnitsky remembers legendary artists of the past. They were all innovators. They developed a new visual language and dived into flaming disputes with their predecessors. According to Pushnitsky, their ironic argument illustrated a simple truth: in the right hands any visual language can be perceived as either traditional or reactionary.

Vitaly Pushnitsky creates his own graffiti comic strip on the surface of a concrete column instead of a customary canvas. And there’s spray paint instead of brushes. A street experiment instead of a studio. And here Pushnitsky is going backwards, if compared to street artists. Those guys start in the street, and should they show some talent and get some luck, their pieces move on to museums and galleries and become a collector’s hunt. While Pushnitsky, having been brought up by the classics, he goes for a street experience and is now goes face to face with a concrete canvas.