The genealogical roots of Valery Kharitonov go back to antiquity and to Russian orthodox mysticism.

They go back to Platonic ideas about the immortality of the soul and to the epic heaviness of forms; they are in his inclination to canonic simplicity and orderly perfection.

The mystical expressionism of today’s Valery Kharitonov reveals itself in the variations of the state of exploded time, in which the artist is looking for the threads of the ruined connection between man and Creator. It also reveals itself in the inevitable apocalyptic motifs, although without their traditionally tragic crescendo.

The approaching line of the turn of the millennium more and more fiercely pervades not only the artist with eschatological consciousness; nevertheless, both his intuition and experience possess a primary value for culture. In Kharitonov, the movement of the objects of the Environment towards a certain flower-bearing end is rather some inner state experienced repeatedly, a peculiar kind of transformation, the instant of the wheel of the eternal return where the chaos of just-broken form is followed by a new creative act. Thus, in the confines of one plastic idea, the aggressive red burns the blue and the yellow in order to spread the canvas with green...
With the green source.

The mystery of life’s breath is between the poles of the spectrum in the dynamics of an explosion or the symphony of a stream, but not in a moment of peace cast in bronze.

The Environment that creates forms and the Environment that destroys forms exist in mutual tension. The moment of their harmonious oneness is expressed in “The Day of Creation” in the artist’s variations, from the peaceful harmony of cold semitones to Dionysian turbulence; to the bluish yellow games of passion; and, still further, to nostalgic and elevated psalms in Paradise.

The artist’s goal is not to invent a new letter of the alphabet of artistic methods: he is wrapped up in himself and, as it seems to me, is methodically developing his way, which gives him an opportunity to fully realise his deep potentialities. From the Valery Kharitonov of the decorative and theatrical to the Valery Kharitonov of the mystical and epic—this is both the path and the distance of the conflicting state of his works, in which every centimetre of the canvas is in itself a whole picture.

The colour palette of the artist is the path between existence and eternity, originating from the earth that gave birth to him; that is why, behind all the expressiveness of Kharitonov’s works, we can feel the freckled quietness of birch groves, the quietness and pensiveness of songs that were always a prominent feature of Russian art. Belonging to a romantic wing of the Moscow painting school, Kharitonov keeps to his own solitary way.