Andrey Shchelokov (born, 1958, Kohtla-Järve, Estonia) is an artist, installation author, designer, and theater painter. In his works, Shchelokov combines seemingly incompatible themes, promoting the clichés of various cultures and epochs, abstract signs, boulevard art-nouveau prints, Soviet-time military sanitation/hygiene posters and Chinese patterns to the genre of lofty art.
There is a mythological aspect to Shchelekov's work, added on to his consistent representation of the soldier in various stages of action. Through his usage of oil and acrylic, Shchelekov is able to make the solemn figures in his paintings appear three-dimensional. Though there is chaos in his work, everything is well placed and has a powerful resonance, to the focus of the deliberately black and white marked warriors to the deities and spirits floating almost ominously in the background. There is an air of the supernatural about each piece, a type of graphic foreboding created by the artist's mixing of styles to depict humans in various circumstances with an overlapping spiritual, phantom presence that we all have once felt or questioned to be real.
