«Kommersant» («Merchant») newspaper №149(3966), 22.08.2008
Photo: Nikita Infantiev
Fallen in love with tire casings, artist Vladimir Kozin inspiredly sculptures orders and medals from this material.
Contemporary art exhibition
In St. Petersburg gallery of Anna Frants opened an exhibition by Vladimir Kozin – «Rubbers», suprematic compositions from tire casings. Story by Anna Matveeva.
Tire casings are fashionable in this season. Black rubber with touchingly sticking out nipples was discovered by several artists in the same time. Peter Belyi showed a stone garden not long time ago – a rubber stone garden. Vladimir Kozin translated rubber into most famous symbols of Russian art and Russian life. He prepared this rubber set for more than a year, being fallen in love with vulcanized caoutchouc from the first sight.
Artist carries filial feelings to Kazimir Malevich’s suprematic squares, circles and crosses – that’s the reason why he multiplies black rubber squares, crosses and circles so inspiredly. Putting wire framework into rubber, he turns simple geometric forms into three dimensional sculptures, as if he wears flesh on them: from abstract symbols they become something very tangible, concrete and intimate. Rubber is a very textured material and Kozin uses possibilities of texture in the full scale: his «Black square», «Black circle» and «Black cross» carry all past life signs of a tire case – sutures, traces of pressing or sudden black holes on the place of the former nipples. Kozin multiplies crosses and squares, plays with them, places in unexpected perspectives. Malevich’s square, multiplied 64 times becomes a base for the chessboard (black squares – black rubber, white – empty spaces), or he pulls it on a wireframe cube and makes it spin, like in kinetic sculpture, or he sticks it on completely domestic things – chairs, slippers, fly swatters, or, in the end, he puts it into self made glasses, instead of glass, and offers to look with «Malevich’s eyes» on Malevich’s fantasies, made in black rubber.
Second favorite subject for the artist is soviet legacy. He made of rubber a giant Star of a Soviet Union Hero, sickle and hammer, order of Lenin, order of Red Labour Banner, «Pravda» newspaper (this is really a newspaper in a natural size, made of rubber and wires, you can take it, unfold, read) and a separate monumental «Pravda» logotype with a proprietary type and all supposed to be there orders. By the way, about orders: exhibition features an object, transitional from avant-garde series to soviet set – big suprematic medals. On medal ribbons, instead of golden circles, there are the same cross, square and circle, made of black rubber – primary atoms of art, according to Malevich. Really, can you imagine a better award for an artist, than reward from the father of contemporary art himself?
This rubber set represents artist in another light. Vladimir Kozin – performer, actionist, known as a merry lyricist, his previous works are splendid artistic mockery – he could replay world history of art in his kitchen, making staged photographs from the plots of most famous paintings, or redraw sickly-sweet magazine photos with oil, turning them from one-day wonders to high art of painting – all this was just a comic game, even if it was filled with a true goodwill to the object of play. In a rubber set artist shows himself as a serious sculptor. He has a gift to feel the shape and material. He has the courage to use new texture and to make it speak. But he doesn’t lose his sense of humour, that is why «rubbers» are like a good anecdote, with a perfect shape, simple content and easily catchable meaning.