Ivan Chuikov
27 May - 10 Jul 2010
IVAN CHUIKOV
"Distant - Near"
27th May - 10th July 2010
The REGINA gallery is happy to announce a new Moscow project of Ivan Chuikov. Ivan Chuikov has cooperated with the REGINA Gallery for many years. Chuikov’s first show, Theory of Reflection, was held at REGINA in 1992, then there was Fragments of an Interior (1995), ...and Fantastic View from Windows (2000), Apparatus for Watching Emptiness & Infinity (2001), New Works (2004), Restored Values, Part 3 (2006), Void (2008). The Distant - Near show precedes a large MMOMA retrospective of the artist planned for November 2010.
Ivan Chuikov is traditionally an important and unique figure for the Moscow art scene. He is a classic of Conceptualism, an artist who cut the window to Europe, the prince of vacuum, the heretic of easel painting, the Renaissance vivisectionist of image systems, an incarnated antagonism, a dandy of post-Modernism... And all these nicknames were given to him for his faithfulness to the method he chose once.
The new Windows of this author is the same ultimate metaphor of the borderline separating art and life, the artist and the world, and different époques. But the familiar film of depiction, the thin cover of the maya of art has become obviously more thick and simple in Tolstoy’s manner. Mystery hidden by the shroud of every description, the mystery the artist is never tired to remind of is more and more impenetrable.
The heresy of simplicity, a novelty for Ivan Chuikov, is balanced at this show with the playful Yin-Yang puzzle series which the artist insistently recommends to turn upside down from time to time as new meanings appear with every new position of its elements. The title makes it clear that the Yin-Yang series deals with the integrity of the world, with the integrity of opposing elements: the top and the bottom, the earth and the sky, the man and the woman, the executioner and the victim, etc. From the point of view of form, paintings of this series are structured according to the Yin-Yang pattern. Every work comprises only two elements, two color planes which respectively designate these opposing elements. When the work is hanged for the first time, only one plane becomes clear. If it is hanged upside down, the other plane dominates, and we get a different painting with a different meaning and a different content.
And now this Far Away and Close series. Notes made in one breath, easily and merrily, on May 18, 1976, today look like a well-planned (and implemented!) program for the next thirty years and more. The review of all painting genres, the mirroring reflections of reality and imagination, relations between the event and its representation have been posted here for the first time long before the appearance of Versions, Fragments and Theory of Reflection.
It is curious that Ivan Chuikov works with text, quite a rare material for him, in quite recognizable manner, appropriating and fragmenting time, just as he will appropriate and fragment the space of his or of the other person’s visual statement later, reviewing the borderlines separating the far away and the close.
P. S. The absence of quotation marks in inevitable hidden and obvious quotations is not just an attempt to appropriate and fragment undertaken in order to honor to Post-Modernism, the trend to which Ivan Chuikov openly refers himself, it is more like a forced action. Few words could appear here without quotation marks.
Ivan Semyonovich Chuikov was born on May 22, 1935; he graduated from the Moscow State Art Institute named after Surikov in 1960. His first personal show opened in 1957 during the 7th World Youth Festival in Moscow. Member of the Artists Union since 1967. He participated in shows of unofficial art since 1976. Works of Ivan Chuikov can be found in major museum and private art collections including the Pompidou Center in Paris, Zimmerli Museum in New Jersey, the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, and the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.
"Distant - Near"
27th May - 10th July 2010
The REGINA gallery is happy to announce a new Moscow project of Ivan Chuikov. Ivan Chuikov has cooperated with the REGINA Gallery for many years. Chuikov’s first show, Theory of Reflection, was held at REGINA in 1992, then there was Fragments of an Interior (1995), ...and Fantastic View from Windows (2000), Apparatus for Watching Emptiness & Infinity (2001), New Works (2004), Restored Values, Part 3 (2006), Void (2008). The Distant - Near show precedes a large MMOMA retrospective of the artist planned for November 2010.
Ivan Chuikov is traditionally an important and unique figure for the Moscow art scene. He is a classic of Conceptualism, an artist who cut the window to Europe, the prince of vacuum, the heretic of easel painting, the Renaissance vivisectionist of image systems, an incarnated antagonism, a dandy of post-Modernism... And all these nicknames were given to him for his faithfulness to the method he chose once.
The new Windows of this author is the same ultimate metaphor of the borderline separating art and life, the artist and the world, and different époques. But the familiar film of depiction, the thin cover of the maya of art has become obviously more thick and simple in Tolstoy’s manner. Mystery hidden by the shroud of every description, the mystery the artist is never tired to remind of is more and more impenetrable.
The heresy of simplicity, a novelty for Ivan Chuikov, is balanced at this show with the playful Yin-Yang puzzle series which the artist insistently recommends to turn upside down from time to time as new meanings appear with every new position of its elements. The title makes it clear that the Yin-Yang series deals with the integrity of the world, with the integrity of opposing elements: the top and the bottom, the earth and the sky, the man and the woman, the executioner and the victim, etc. From the point of view of form, paintings of this series are structured according to the Yin-Yang pattern. Every work comprises only two elements, two color planes which respectively designate these opposing elements. When the work is hanged for the first time, only one plane becomes clear. If it is hanged upside down, the other plane dominates, and we get a different painting with a different meaning and a different content.
And now this Far Away and Close series. Notes made in one breath, easily and merrily, on May 18, 1976, today look like a well-planned (and implemented!) program for the next thirty years and more. The review of all painting genres, the mirroring reflections of reality and imagination, relations between the event and its representation have been posted here for the first time long before the appearance of Versions, Fragments and Theory of Reflection.
It is curious that Ivan Chuikov works with text, quite a rare material for him, in quite recognizable manner, appropriating and fragmenting time, just as he will appropriate and fragment the space of his or of the other person’s visual statement later, reviewing the borderlines separating the far away and the close.
P. S. The absence of quotation marks in inevitable hidden and obvious quotations is not just an attempt to appropriate and fragment undertaken in order to honor to Post-Modernism, the trend to which Ivan Chuikov openly refers himself, it is more like a forced action. Few words could appear here without quotation marks.
Ivan Semyonovich Chuikov was born on May 22, 1935; he graduated from the Moscow State Art Institute named after Surikov in 1960. His first personal show opened in 1957 during the 7th World Youth Festival in Moscow. Member of the Artists Union since 1967. He participated in shows of unofficial art since 1976. Works of Ivan Chuikov can be found in major museum and private art collections including the Pompidou Center in Paris, Zimmerli Museum in New Jersey, the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, and the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.