Once upon a time, a local madman approached me during my exhibition in the distant Kamchatka peninsula, vigorously shaking my hand and passionately thanking me for ‘revealing a Jewish-Masonic conspiracy’ in one of my cartoons. My friends began hushing him and getting indignant – there’s nothing like that there, you need to sober up! But I started thinking: my colleagues strive to make their drawings as simple and self-explanatory as possible, and that is one of the reasons why people never look at cartoons twice or recognize them as real art.

Why shouldn’t I make full-color cartoons with an intentionally polyvalent, complex meaning, allowing for different interpretations according to the viewer? At least five or six symbolic meanings, to spark a discussion. Even better if art critics started fighting, and obscurantists and politicians slaughtered each other over them. As long as it’s not boring!