The artist talks about some kind of Martian creatures that roam among us. Maybe it is so. However the exhibition as a whole says quite the contrary: the study of materials, which Petr Shvetsov has immersed himself in here, examines the ability of ordinary material and material overloaded with negative associations to switch meanings. And if in the inscriptions on the tiles the artist was working with concepts such as the art of graffiti, brutalism and the mixing of the profane and the professional, in his new project he isn’t breaking up tiles as much as our instinctive aversion to disfigured surfaces. Shvetsov does not rip art apart like Fontana, and does not turn its back to us, like many followers of the great Italian, his object here is not in fact art at all, he works solely with the viewer.
Kira Dolinina, "Kommersant-SPB", 2010, number 12
With any new exhibition by Russian artist Petr Shvetsov, all bets are off. Delighting in the subversion of expectations, each new body of work is a confrontation that asks as many questions as it answers. Whether making drawings, sculpture, painting, installation or, asi n the latest exhibition, working with ceramictile, Shvetsov explores each medium to its fullest, testing the limits of the possible while remaining true to his artistic vocabulary. For his latest show, Shvetsov has converted the gallery into his studio as much for practical as for aesthetic reasons. The result is that, in each of the three gallery spaces, he has created a unique environment which negotiates the line between installation and the straightforward presentation of painting. The panels of tile lining the walls of the ground floor galleries bring to mind the interior of public conveniences with their cold uniformity. Shvetsov’s strategy is to attack the hygienic white surface and regularity of the grid with his own imagery in an act of creative vandalism.
Christopher Gordon, exhibition curator