Andrey Bilzho is an artist, cartoonist, essayist, and animator. Originally trained as a psychiatrist with a medical degree, he became an honoured member of the Russian Academy of Arts. Since the 1970s, he has published his caricatures in many Russian periodicals. Through his most famous cartoon character, Petrovich—a composite image of the contemporary "little man" and the town madman—Bilzho has been satirising and raising uncomfortable questions about everything that concerns him since the early '90s. After the onset of the war, everything changed.

“Petrovich is in a coma. Whether he will return from it or not is unknown.”

In Bilzho's new works, the humour, if present at all, is dark and grim.

“These are not caricatures. These are drawings that encapsulate my emotions, my perspective—sometimes unexpected, paradoxical—on various events. My mind continues to react to the emergence of new words, phrases, and concepts, playing with them and making puns, but the mood in the drawings has changed. There is more harshness, more sadness.”

The exhibition features two of Bilzho's works that satirize Putin's peculiar affection towards other people's children and his habit of kissing them, particularly the infamous episode of kissing a child on the stomach. Bilzho suggests that this is not tenderness, not cuteness, not a touching PR stunt. This is the devil's kiss, and nothing good can come from the devil.

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*quotes from Andrei Bilzho's interview with Novaya Gazeta. Baltia https://novayagazeta.ee/articles/2023/10/12/khudzhnik-karikaturist-andrei-bilzho-otkryl-vystavku-azbuka-voiny-rige-petrovich-v-kome-a-mne-sovsem-ne-smeshno

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