Igor Shelkovsky's pictorial system can be described as avant-garde. It was formed under the influence of two internally related traditions. His works reflect the motifs of ancient Russian art and wooden architecture - complex carving of window frames, geometric and plant ornaments - and the search for the foundations of form-making, which were the focus of the Russian avant-garde. The artist's reliefs and sculptures continue the traditions of avant-garde artists such as Kazimir Malevich, Ivan Puni, Vladimir Tatlin, and Ivan Klyun.

Shelkovsky's three-dimensional compositions retain a direct connection with his painting. He translates quite traditional pictorial subjects and genres (landscape, portrait, still life) into volume, but rethinks them through his artistic and philosophical optics. Thus, "Clouds", inspired by the landscape of the same name by Arkhip Kuindzhi, becomes a volumetric and ordered structure.

Shelkovsky himself gave the most accurate definition of his sculptures, calling them "drawings in the air". "I am not interested in the mass of stone, plaster, bronze, but rather in the outline, the scheme, the transparency. It is as if I am drawing in the air, the eye sees the lines, the contour, and only the imagination creates the general, that is, the object itself." Nature, the visible world, is a constant source of his creativity.

Naturally, the theme of the city is one of the recurring themes in Shklovsky's work. The extremely ordered, plastically verified forms of Shelkovsky's megapolis harmonize natural and man-made nature. The white color is also no coincidence, reminiscent of both white-stone temples and Malevich's space. In this "heavenly city", a garden city, Shelkovsky embodies a model of the universe based on the universal laws of nature and world harmony.