He is known only as Dima, but is already hailed by art critics in Russia and abroad as a dramatic and self-assertive genius.
His paintings are bold statements, using words, sentences and even numbers to convey his reality.
You might call his work minimalist, or even (as one critic dubbed it) lettrism. Compositions of empty space appear around minimized objects while parallel with them are a number of works with endless arabesque signs etched on a surface -- be it glass or canvas.
Dima enjoys tapping away on a typewriter -- words, dates, figures which eventually end up in his works. The tap-tap-tapping soothes his mind and gives rise to inspiration, although what it means only he knows.
Dima says he lives, quite literally, through painting and comes into contact with the surrounding world through his work. But he is so self-absorbed and introverted that it would take a psychiatrist to make head or tail of it.
It is incredibly childish. Take his oil on cardboard "Pravda", for example, which he painted in 1991. Red is smeared on the canvas in swirls and meets black along the painting's border. In the red is etched barely intelligible letters -- one can make out `USA' and the date `1978' -- but so what? Dima alone knows.
And then there is his work "129 Months Have Passed", oil on canvas 1994. Slightly more optimistic, but it's all been seen before. Nothing new in this at all.
At least "Kettle" 1993, looks like a kettle, but this oil on canvas, in primary blue and red against a black background, is the stuff of the primary school classroom.
"Figure" 1992 is imaginative and shows good use of color, painted in autumn hues and clear demarcation lines between blocks of color.
"Balloons" 1988 with its gorgeous blue-green tones is no less imaginative but "December" 1995 -- part of a seasonal collection of paintings -- is totally senseless and unimaginative. It does perhaps reflect however, the depressing darkness of a St Petersburg winter. But why the bright, white triangle?
If painting is for him an inner necessity, this artist must miss the simple pleasures of childhood. He may never have wanted to grow up and face the bitter reality of the external world.
Dima has been painting for a long time now -- 20 years. Born in Moscow, he grew up in an artistic family where famous Moscow "underground" artists, as they were called in those days, were friends and visitors. From them he received advice and a number of lessons.
"White Bear" 1985 - oil on canvas.
He learnt the principles of oil painting and technique, and the principles of composition. Dima moved to Germany in 1985 and he now lives in Frankfurt.
At the opening of the Dima exhibition at the Zalustowicz Gallery in Bielefeld critics said that his use of the subject matter as the whole was "nothing new" but while Dima uses traditional motifs, his construction of the painting merits closer analysis.
Objects dominate the space. They have scale and exist independently of normal relationships. Even the small works are monumental but everything is simple, nothing complex.
But perhaps existing independently of normal relationships is the key here. It is his inner mind and emotions which we see reflected on these canvases.