Painted striped wallpaper. “Either you take the train to the future, or you get on it when everyone has already left.”

In the ninth grade, Pokras Lampas (this is, of course, a pseudonym - but it has already penetrated even into the passport) began to paint the walls of Korolev’s hometown. Today Pokras creates calligraphic design for brands - from Nike to Lamborghini and public art for Atrium, Red October and even the New Tretyakov Gallery. His idea fix is a globalist project of a multicultural future with the ambitious name “New Visual Culture”. “The Knife”, together with the artist, decomposed this future into its components, from media to technology, found out the latest trends in the world of street art and recalled awkward stories from the past, understanding the relationship between calligraphy, contemporary art and feminism.

Mural “Dualism” (press release)

- You often mention the special status of the millennial generation. And in the new work “Dualism” for the St. Petersburg Wynwood Hotel, you cover a huge wall with a kind of “manifesto for millennials.” The text in your works is unreadable for the viewer - so tell us what kind of manifesto it is.

The text is very simple. It says that we are creating a new visual culture and that we are the future. And the same in English.

My idea is that this is the message that is passed on from one generation to another - with minor changes. And I try to express these changes not through the text itself, but through the way it is written. The symbols themselves include references to different cultures and indicate that the new generation is more open to multicultural connections.

- Nowadays, many consider the cutting-edge generation not millennials - Generation Y - but Generation Z, born after 1995. Interestingly, what separates them is precisely in the world of street art and calligraphy.

I myself was born in 1991, closer to Z. But to be honest, I always looked more at people who are already successful. And I was surprised to see that there was a gap of ten to fifteen years between us and them. That is, I always feel that I am catching up with them, following them.

But the younger generation works powerfully with photography and digital. One of the coolest guys who will definitely shoot is @eduard_ov. He is 20 years old, and he produces very high-quality and cool things, working with augmented reality.

Photo: © Igor Zhuk

Over the past two years, the young calligrapher Arseny Pyzhenkov with the funny pseudonym “Pokras Lampas” has become widely known among calligraphy fans and is in demand in the field of design. Now Arseny not only hones his writing skills, but also willingly shares his knowledge and best practices with everyone. We asked Pokras to tell our readers about his creative path.

Study and graffiti

My name is Arseniy, my creative pseudonym is Pokras Lampas. I am twenty three years old. I was born and raised in the town of Korolev near Moscow. The first time I picked up a spray can was back in school, around 2005. It was all pampering: tags behind garages and inept flops. I became seriously interested in graffiti after meeting Andrey Ante. After graduating from ninth grade, I went to college, and there Andrey showed me the other side of graffiti: bright designs, elaborate drawings and a thorough approach to business. This gave me the motivation to sketch every day and constantly work on shapes, for which I am very grateful.

My pseudonym is about six years old. At first I came up with it for myself: somehow it just came to my mind to call myself Pokras, and I took “Lampas” for rhyme - it seemed funny. Over time, I got used to it and began to use it as my main creative pseudonym. It even got to the point that recently the organizers of a master class in Turkey bought me tickets under the name “Pokras Lampas”.

Calligraphy

Awesome letter, 2013 © Pokras Lampas

I became interested in calligraphy about four years ago. I have always loved complex tagging and won more than one competition, so my hand was well filled. I started trying to write various gothic letters, and after getting acquainted with the works of Niels Shoe and Luca Bercellona, I realized how seriously this could be developed.

Work by Nils Möhlman

Artwork by Luca Barcellona

I'm self-taught. I even wrote my first Gothic alphabets from my head: no academic rules like “the height of the letter is equal to n widths of the pen” and so on. Ever since the graffiti days, the most valuable thing for me was to get an original style, so I tried to protect myself from unnecessary influence even in learning calligraphy. I rode the train home from school and wrote on the road, trying not to stain those around me with ink or marker. I recently reviewed it - everything is crooked and sometimes incorrect, but it was very important, as it teaches you to form an image of a letter in your head.

© Pokras Lampas
Turkey, 2014 © Pokras Lampas
2013 © Pokras Lampas
Sasha Swamp, 2013 © Pokras Lampas
Minimonster, 2013 © Pokras Lampas
Los Cikos La Brendos, 2013 © Pokras Lampas
Sullen, 2013 © Pokras Lampas

Roughly speaking, I learned the basics from scratch on my own, and began to carefully study “correct” historical calligraphy later, when they started inviting me to give master classes on this topic. I found relevant information in various thematic blogs, read articles, and tried to translate. In the end, it turned out that there is historical calligraphy and reinterpreted calligraphy - exactly what I have always tried to write. This strengthened my belief in the need to experiment and educate myself.

My main principle of work is constant improvisation, and then a detailed analysis of the result and memorizing interesting moments. This way I can write the same word a hundred times in different ways, and then use all this experience to create an original font composition. The point is that a sketch, a sketch, a line, and so on form an invisible bar, a boundary in creativity. With this approach, you can learn to write a perfect frame or rotunda, but it is almost impossible to generate that unusual image that you cannot even fully imagine yourself.

© Pokras Lampas, 2014

I have always been of the opinion that you cannot be a professional in everything, especially at my age. Therefore, the main emphasis has always been on fonts. Letters provide enormous scope for creativity, since, in addition to calligraphy, there is lettering, typography, many different tools, techniques, and stylistics. Fonts can also be associated with knowledge from the field of graphic design, layout, various programs, applied materials, muralism, and various experiments. So I try not to limit myself to the plane of the lined paper.

Graffiti and street art

Work by Pokras Lampas in Vyksa, 2013

I have a huge list of favorite graffiti writers, street artists, calligraphers and painters. I try to follow both our graffiti scene and the European one. And if you add graphic design, illustration and various complex projects, the list becomes simply gigantic. Preferences, of course, change over time.

It’s interesting to follow the development of graffiti and street art. I’m glad that people’s perception of graffiti culture is improving, I’m glad that art is spreading in public spaces, and I’m glad that various exhibitions and events are being held. Of course, on the one hand, everything appears with some delay and does not develop as actively. But, on the other hand, for many this is an opportunity to be in the forefront, so everything has its advantages.

In graffiti and street art, I appreciate originality and boldness of solutions. At the same time, courage for me can be in the choice of size, but also in technique, composition, color scheme and, of course, in the idea. I do not tolerate the use of graffiti and public art for political purposes.

Nowadays, few writers pay attention to the skill of writing tags. I have the following explanation for this: historically, the tag was a replacement for the logo on the streets, then the priority was recognition, speed and originality. But now the tag is used as a signature, and if it is complex, it can shift the focus away from the work. For example, if a tag is too dense, it will be perceived as a color spot. Many borrow techniques from the same design: they sign in a heavily sparse or narrow readable font that would complement rather than disrupt the overall composition.

Master classes

Kazan. Photo: © Yulia Subbotskaya

Why do I like giving talks and workshops? First of all, learning requires systematization of accumulated knowledge. Thus, I always discover certain theses, principles and techniques in my own works. Secondly, I am glad that I am promoting calligraphy as a culture in Russia. This allows me, beyond the basics of lettering, to share my experiences working with clients, help me avoid making my mistakes, and convey my attitude towards creative development in general.

Pokras Lampas is a calligrapher-futurist. Using brushes, markers and other available tools, he covers any surface with his famous pattern, from canvases and credit cards to a glass crosswalk and the roof of a “square Coliseum.” Design Mate caught up with the artist in between projects to decipher social media posts, understand the Arabic-Cyrillic script, and find out what Pokras Lampas' first manifesto will be about.

Why do you pay so much attention to post-production: photographs, videos of performances that are published on social accounts?

In both art and creativity, a very important point is documentation of what you have created. Sometimes the value of a performance is not in what was done, but in how it is visually documented and described. From the point of view of history and chronology, if a project has not been correctly described, it practically does not exist. Therefore, it is important for me that each project is revealed in the most interesting way. All received materials, texts, photographs, videos, need to be properly systematized, turned into a presentation, uploaded to a conditional Behance, and from this create another project that you can talk about. Social media management is also being developed. It is mine . If you look at my posts, you won’t see any unnecessary words there. Almost all of them are dedicated to the creative path. This is how I popularize both contemporary art and what I do myself.

How do Pokras Lampas’ projects differ from each other? Why can’t this be called the same ornament applied to different surfaces?

It’s not like an artist makes completely different canvases in a year or two. On the contrary, all works from an artistic point of view are analyzed over decades. And for each time period, certain periods are formed, from which key works and series of works are isolated. Many have spoiled themselves with online sources, where every day three selections of different calligraphy, designs, posters, and topography are given out.

Users are accustomed to the fact that an artist must constantly entertain them with something new.

At the same time, in reality, people who constantly show something new are most likely to borrow a lot from their colleagues, and borrow superficially. Sooner or later this fountain stops. The first thing I came to and what I continue to strive for is correct self-identification. So if my work can be easily recognized, I completed the main task during this period of time most effectively. As for the pattern itself, of course, within it I can experiment with letter shapes, always in different ways. Calligraphy is very much tied to how the hand writes. The angle of inclination of the tool, the width of the tool, the paint viscosity and density, the roughness or smoothness of the surface have changed slightly, and the calligraphy will be different.

These are subtle changes for those who skim through the works, but for the viewer who has been following this for a long time, the differences are obvious. Letter shapes, new composition structures, geometry - somewhere a square, somewhere a circle, somewhere an arc, somewhere a line. The same work with a pattern invites a person to understand how coolly he can reveal the potential of a particular surface. My task is to make the result seem very simply done, despite the fact that I kill myself for hours, tens of hours in the process of work.

Which of the Moscow surfaces was the most difficult?

Naturally, the transition between the Atrium and the Kursk station. Not because I wrote on glass for the first time in my life, but because of difficult weather conditions. November-December, the temperature is minus, very cold. To write on the floor in the passage, we installed the most powerful diesel heat guns, which work like turbines, which still couldn’t reach me. Plus, I worked with paint that is very resistant to reagents and other influences, which made it possible to preserve the transition for a long time. When I wrote to her, she was very stuck. This is very inconvenient, including psychologically: it’s uncomfortable to create something when you see a lot of constraint and problems in every movement. Everything else is simple for me - even painting the roof.

Language is a key element of your work. How many languages do you know?

I study languages not based on linguistics or grammar, but on deconstruction. The most important thing is to analyze the language in terms of how it is written. I may not know what the Japanese is writing, but I will know for sure that at a particular moment he holds his hand in a certain position, makes a certain movement, finishes the line at a certain angle. This information is more valuable than a literal translation.

When I started learning Korean, I flew to Korea, lived there for a month and a half, and began reading and writing in Korean.

When I wrote, a local calligrapher sat next to me and guided me. He said: “Paint, here you made too long a line, here you can’t make a dense point, because you will get a different symbol,” and so on. Now the priority is to study Japanese in order to understand the language of the future - it is very concise and deep in terms of forms. I do not rule out that during my life I will go through all cultures and devote part of my creative periods to flying to some country and making a series of works dedicated to the local culture. At the moment, at the stage of forming the concept, the primary manifesto, I don’t need to know the language in order to deconstruct it. For now, my existing knowledge, how I follow writing, how I see letters, is enough to be comfortable enough to work simultaneously with Arabic, Chinese, and other languages.

Are numbers also a language?

Certainly. Firstly, there are all the encoding options: binary, 64-digit, and so on. Secondly, the meaning of the numbers is that, for example, Arabic numbers are present in almost all modern writings and fonts. If you can’t repeat the shape of a letter somewhere, you can replace it with a number. And this applies to many languages because we visually identify that "1" is "I", "0" is "O", "5" is "S". The number becomes a letter - in terms of deconstruction, they are very close in form. We can’t even distinguish “Z” and “3” when writing. When I write a text, I can easily replace “Z” with a three simply because I suddenly got bored.

Do you somehow work with Braille?

I'm converting some of my texts and notes to braille to see what it looks like. This is an interesting visual technique for potential projects. But I don’t want to mix everything into one pan just yet.

Why are you trying your hand at fashion?

Fashion has become one of the areas of art. If we look, for example, at the guys from A-Cold-Wall, we will notice that their collections are more a demonstration of the artist's perception of clothing than the designer's perception of clothing. Design is the search for some technological, convenient, understandable thing. Art is how I see it, and the viewer either accepts it or not. There is more freedom in fashion. Sterling Ruby and Raf Simons are a cool example of how an artist and a designer create something new together. Not only things, but also the presentation of these things: interior designs, installations - it’s all one big world, and you shouldn’t forget about it.

As for me, I see an amazing opportunity to properly popularize and show my point of view, including on things, through fashion. In the new collection I am preparing clothes on which the manifesto will be partially printed.

My position is revealed within the framework of art, media presence and things.

They become an integral part of life, a person associates himself with the thing, with these words, with the art itself. I make clothes not for money, but for the sake of realizing my ideas. Instead of producing cheap T-shirts, we spend six months developing the cut, looking for fabric, and making some wild wooden tags that can be used to write calligraphy. I try to uncover things using the tools available. That’s why they have Mayakovsky, manifestos, and the word “culture” on them.

You are represented by the Dubai Opera Gallery. You have worked with Fendi, Nike, YSL Beautē and other big brands. Why do you continue to create merch, invite subscribers to closed events - why are you so accessible to non-secular audiences?

In Russia, my main goal is not to make canvases to sell them, but to make something that the viewer will see, hear, and feel. So I hope to do an exhibition here through Opera, not as a gallery, but through Opera, which will connect me and the right museum spaces. There are people in Russia who want to work with me, museums with whom I can find a common language. In the right fusion of a strict, serious gallery, my desire to popularize art for different audiences, and an adequate museum that also sees great potential in this, we will make something big, complex. Where there will be things, accessories, canvases, manifestos, and projections - in the right harmonious proportion, immersing you in a new visual culture.

For a long time I asked myself the same questions: I jealously followed what was happening here, who pays whom for city installations and art objects, who destroys them, who launders money, who protects art - who generally participates in such processes. Once I went as a speaker to the Moscow Cultural Forum in Manege, where I was able to meet with the prefects of several government departments in the center and outlying areas. I talked to the Deputy Minister of Culture - he is very cool. There is an understanding that there are not enough people from art who are ready to engage in an adequate dialogue, and there are not enough people from power who are ready to take serious risks. There are many people of culture and state who want to do something. But since everything is decided at different levels, the key trust is missing. I value my reputation, so if I said that some project can be done, it will be done. And this will be a high-quality result that will receive the attention of the audience. We need other artists to have the same opportunity to work. And this directly depends on them. The more the author himself creates and defends his position, the faster his career goes in a place where nothing happens.

The annual event “Night at the Museum” will take place on May 19. Pokras is actively preparing for this event, working 14-hour shifts. His art object will highlight the entrance to the New Tretyakov Gallery, which traditionally opens from the Crimean embankment. On social networks, the artist warns: this

Pokras Lampas is a young calligraphist whose works have become known throughout the world. This is the artist’s creative pseudonym, which should soon become his real name. The biography of the artist Pokras Lampas is rich in interesting events. It tells how the writer’s creative path developed and what style he works in.

The artist's creative path

The artist's real name is Arseny Pyzhenkov, he was born in the city of Korolev on September 19, 1991. His creative path began in school. The pseudonym was chosen around the same years. “Pokras” translated from writer’s slang means “to go paint,” and the word “Lampas” simply became a funny rhyme. The turning point for the artist was when the organizers of the master class from Turkey bought the artist a ticket under the name “Pokras Lampas”. At that moment, the ticket had to be changed, and the artist decided to change his real name to a creative pseudonym and in his passport.

The artist does not have an academic education, as he himself has admitted more than once. In his works he does not adhere to the academic principles of art, but does everything intuitively. He had to learn the basics of calligraphy only at the moment when he began to be invited to master classes and speak in front of the public. According to the artist himself, then he had a great responsibility, and he had to provide correct information from the point of view of the fundamentals of art. Oddly enough, in the process of reading books, he discovered that all the professional authors wrote about what Pokras had been intuitively moving toward all his life.

Artist's style

This artist’s style is called “calligraffiti” - a fusion of calligraphy and graffiti. In fact, Pokras is the founder of this direction and is actively developing it. Nowhere in the world has such a technique been used before. Every day the artist develops new techniques for drawing, inventing new fonts and styles. His works are made in the Gothic style, but in his drawing style you can also find a mixture of different directions that help create unusual and original solutions. This artist has a huge number of completed works; he travels all over the world and speaks at master classes. Having seen his work once, Pokras Lampas will no longer be confused with someone else.

Works by Painting Lampas

"Awesome letter", 2013

Decor on Lamborghini

Bridge between Atrium and Kursky Station, 2018

"Transit Zone", 2014

Work on the arch in Yekaterinburg

What do we know about street art? People don’t go to exhibitions dedicated to him and don’t discuss new works by famous artists. What do we know about calligraphy? Few people even think that this is real art.

Young artist with a creative pseudonym Painting Lampas, a representative of the calligraphy movement, combined street culture and the technique of beautiful writing in his work.

Arseny Pyzhenkov is a calligrapher from the town of Korolev near Moscow. He became interested in street art at the age of 15-16, not expecting that by the age of 27 he would become one of the most famous representatives of this art movement.

Pokras became seriously interested in calligraphy almost eight years ago. He was inspired to work hard on style and technique by foreign artists such as Niels Schu Möllman and Luca Bercellona.

Pokras is self-taught. He did not attend master classes, did not graduate from art schools and academies - he learned everything on his own. The main task of the artist was to develop his own style, not to go into imitation and copying. He did not study the academic rules of calligraphy, but wrote using his own flair and imagination.

The main principle of his work is improvisation. The artist believes that sketches and drawings do not allow him to create the original and memorable image that he strives for. Therefore, Pokras happily participates in live performances at various events (performances at the UOT Lena Maximova show, VK festival and for the YSL brand).

Many of Pokras’s works are made in the style of calligraphic futurism. It was invented by the artist himself, and is an experiment on the future of calligraphy. Calligraph-futurism is based on unreadable fonts - symbols of many alphabets and personally invented by the artist.

It would seem that futurism and calligraphy are two incompatible things.

Futurism in painting is a prototype of the art of the future, the destruction of existing cultural stereotypes. In the paintings of futurists, the main thing is movement and speed. Calligraphy is the art of beautiful and clear writing. Pokras manages to combine these directions in his works without losing the ease of writing and energy of movement characteristic of futurism.

“What will happen if you feel the flow of Arabic script, the rhythm and harmony of European Gothic, the lightness of Italic with a flat bone and the clarity and sonority of Japanese typography? Add street style, oriental and Aztec symbols, modern tools, new colors - and the work is ready. This is how I see calligraphic futurism. Balance of culture, art and technology. This is not a manifesto or a concept.", writes Pokras about his own style on the public Vkontakte page.

Indeed, when you look at the work of a calligrapher, you see something of your own in these letters of mixed languages and styles, a light breath of academicism combined with expression and the spirit of modern calligraphy. Pokras’s works fascinate with their clarity and at the same time abstract composition. The letters and symbols intertwined in circles are reminiscent of a new interpretation of the Fibonacci spiral and, perhaps, that is why they are so harmonious.

It is this departure from the academic style that makes the artist’s calligraphy so memorable. Futurism can be easily seen in the many curved or clear lines that complement the symbols and create a sense of movement and never-ending energy. In Pokras’s works one can see the influence of European calligraphers, but with the addition of the originality of the realities of the Russian artistic environment.

The calligrapher's canvases are exhibited all over the world, including installations in St. Petersburg and Moscow, exhibitions in Seoul and the prestigious Opera Gallery in Dubai.

For an exhibition in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, a new series of paintings was created, which marked the beginning of calligraphic futurism in Pokras’s work.

The artist collaborated with Nike and Mercedes-benz, Tele2, Reebok and Megafon, and created images for the Dries Van Noten clothing collection for Paris Fashion Week. He agreed to real adventures: he painted the Atrium tunnel, the roof in the Portuguese city of Lure, which is an installation of 1200 square meters.

One of the most significant projects in Pokras’s work is the largest calligraphy in the world on the roof of the former Red October plant. Its size was 1625 square meters, and 730 liters of paint and two days of work were spent on its creation. This calligraphy can be seen even from space.

The elevated passage from the Kursky Station to the Atrium is Pokras’s most complex Russian project. The walls and floor of the tunnel are covered with quotes from Mayakovsky, Rodchenko and other Russian avant-garde artists reinterpreted in contemporary art.

The FENDI fashion house invited Pokras to paint the roof of the Palace of Italian Civilization in Rome. The building itself, which is an architectural monument and made of marble, could not be painted. Therefore, a special deck was built on the roof, on which a message was placed to creators “who want to create new things and connect different cultures and generations together.”

Pokras carries out all his global projects alone, he writes three-meter letters on a Portuguese roof, he paints Lamborgini, Ferrari and Shortcut sports cars. The artist says that big projects give strength to move on, “spread your wings behind your back.” According to him, “...creativity does not have a single right path and a single mission, but it always depends on the spirit of the time and reflects it”.

Pokras’s path in art is a constant struggle with oneself and overcoming personal limits. With his work, the artist not only challenges academic calligraphy, but also strives to show the younger generation the synthesis of street art and calligraphy in a new light, and to convey to the public the full artistic value of street culture.