The name Kirill Chelushkin might be associated with book illustrations at its first place. As thus Chelushkin illustrated numerous books both for adults and children and received many international book awards. In the international competition "Classics of Russian Literature in Contemporary Editions for Children", which was held in Moscow on 28th October 2000 and which was devoted to the 200th birthday of A.S. Pushkin, Kirill Chelushkin received the first price for illustrations which he made for Pushkin's "A Drowned Man". In the sector of children's books, Kirill Chelushkin and Chang Li-jung received the Hans Christian Andersen Award, which is often referred to as the "Little Nobel Prize", and which is the highest international recognition given to an author and illustrator of children's books.

Apart from being known for his book illustrations, the qualified architect is also known for his futurist sketches, which often resembles the works of Leonardo da Vinci. Never having been keen on working as an architect, Kirill Chelushkin still uses his achitctural skills when working on his major topic being found in his series: the meaning and the language of art.

At the Taipei International Book Exhibition, where Chelushkin was recently nominated as Russian Classical Literature Illustrations award winner, he stated that he paid special attention to the inner meaning of an author's work. He remarked that artists use their creations to communicate with the public. To the world, an artist's work had certain meanings, and though people sometimes might not understand them, these creations nonetheless had subtle but far-reaching effects on our lives.

An entirely different approach of exploring the meaning and the language of art has been taken by Chelushkin in his series "Drawings" which was shown in Moscow in 1999. In this series the artist draws a ridge isolating the none art world from the world of art, making apparent its own area, confirming its status of being independent from any visual or metaphoric context.

A more reflexive approach of the artist's topic has been taken in the next series called "Antimimesis" which was shown in Moscow one year later in 2000. The title of the series is the antithesis of Plato's idea of the imitative nature of art. Here, Kirill Chelushkin emphasizes the merits of art based on individual creativity, spontanity and autonomous processing.

The artist`s series "Designer's Bureau" was shown at the Art Miami this year. Chelushkin uses his architectural abilities to present great futuristic sketches and crosses the border of mere architectural drawing by using the tools of art, its meaning and language to lead us into his fictional world. One of Chelushkin's particularities is that he rejects drawing on paper but uses plastic and graphite for his works.

Kirill Chelushkin was born in Abramtsevo, Russia in 1968 and graduated from the Institute of Architecture in Moscow in 1994. His art works have been exhibited in Russia, the Czech Republic, the United States, Belgium and France.

¿ Selma Stern 2003