Dirt Painting by Nikita Golubev aka ProBoyNick

The Russian artist and illustrator Nikita Golubev - aka ProBoyNick - creates artwork on dirty trucks and cars and right now, they're doing the rounds of the web. Ephemeral and totally sustainable because he doesn't use paint or other artifices.


Have you ever been appalled by the sight of cars and lorries covered in the grime, salt and fumes from winter traffic in the city? And have you ever traced the words “wash me” onto a particularly dirty van? Well, as we all know, you just need to change perspective for some things to take on a whole new meaning.
And once more it is art that comes to our aid in this mental exercise, with the latest - and ongoing - artwork by the Russian artist and illustrator Nikita Golubev, known on the web as ProBoyNick. Golubev is inspired by the thick layers of black dirt covering cars, vans and trucks on Russian roads and has begun using them as a canvas for his drawings, using the dirt to give full rein to his creativity.
Tough, delicate and “first-time lucky” work because there is no second or third time, given that what he does is wipe or scratch off the layers of dirt to create depth and optical effects that reference delicate charcoal etchings.
Not surprisingly, one of the most popular artworks on the internet are “Hands clasped in prayer” modelled after the famous early 1500s drawing by Albrecht Dürer. Now, half a millennium later, this artwork has been reproduced on the back of a van travelling on Russian roads. An artistic exercise that grabs you because it is so ephemeral, it will only last until it rains - or until the vehicle is washed.
Thanks to digital photography and to the viral spread of ProBoyNick's images on the web, these one-of-a-kind artworks, circumscribed in time and space, do more than just win their famous, Andy Warhol-style 15 minutes of glory, they also win a place in the eternal present that the fluid time of the third millennium has become. In the end, the 500 years that separate Nikita Golubev from Dürer are just a moment in time, which is temporarily fixed in the dirt and grime built up from urban traffic. We could draw on any number of symbols and meanings, but right now let's just enjoy the shark along the side of a big-engined car, or the eyes of the falcon staring out at us from the back of a van: the creative and fully sustainable moment because ProBoyNick reuses dirt for his artworks, instead of paints.

Christiane Bürklein

Dirt Painting by Nikita Golubev
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/proboynick/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nikitagolubevart/
Immagini: courtesy of ProBoyNick