Fatal Strategies
From the catalogue to the exhibition "No Mans Land"
Copenhagen 1995, p. 75 - 77
Viktor Misiano
<...> ln the context of reality appropriation strategy, the poetics of
Dmitri Gutov is extremely individual, and can be described as a poetics of critical
reality. The starting point challenges the protective conservatism of Zakharov
and The Hermeneuts, as well as the vitality of Osmolovski and Kulik. In Gutov's
point of view, reality is not meaningless, but pregnant with meaning. The essential
is to focus our attention on its thorough comprehension, on reading its intrinsic
meanings. That is why the central issue for the poetics of critical reality
is to acquire the ability to make pronouncements whose reference is not a text
but reality. This is where it gets its perception of deconstruction as purely
scholastic and its requirement that a pronouncement must have critical clarity
and analytical capacity, in artistic practice, this means aiming at the maximal
reduction of the language: reality is only visible where
language is minimal and transparent. In other words, existence comes into being
where art disappears. Such aesthetic austerity betrays, however, ethic pathos
inherent in the poetics of critical realism in the 19c and 20c. But the ethical
austerity of the poetics does not prevent it from imparting singular significance
to the act of representation: once an objective pronouncement is found, it must
be publicly proclaimed. This is art reduced and then exalted into magic performativism.
But how referential are the objective pronouncements of the critical reality
poetics? They are nothing but installational variants of works dating back to
the recent and not so recent past. Put another way, the reference of Gutov's
works is artistic reality rather than reality itself. Self-reduction of language
is not the uncovering of reality, but merely a tautological exercise, i. e.,
the language closes in upon itself, turning severe critical realism into refined
aestheticism. Symptomatic of this poetic is its laying bare the collisions that
accompany the rise of the new critical consciousness. The philosophy of Gutov's
poetics proves to be born-again Marxism, the so-called "Leninist theory
of reflection", the theoretical heritage of Mikhail Lifshits. Although
logical in its movement towards analytical, rational opposition to the sphere
of meaninglessness and entropy, new criticism nevertheless failed to construct
a methodology and became the product of recycling. Gutov professes his new orthodoxy
with a zeal that equals that shown by Osmolovski and Kulik in calling forth
the demons of power and chaos. <...>
1995