Dmitry Gutov presents a new series of his three-dimensional works in metal. This time, he takes as his source ancient Russian icons. Working with icon imagery is quite logical from a formal point of view since it is well known that icons were based on so-called exempla – drawn samples of images – a set of which was owned by practically every professional icon painter. Gutov himself claims that he chose not to use any exempla that survive in archives because of how standardized they are. Indeed, the creative moment in a Russian icon begins not with the act of copying and repetition, but from its failure when an unforeseen discrepancy occurs.

It is very difficult to determine the genre of these art objects.

A flat ornate metal “grate” is made into a peculiar type of dimensional sculpture. As soon as one steps slightly to the right or left, the image begins to get distorted. And this distortion goes through all the stages of the development of Russian art in the 20th century, from cubism, to expressionism, to radical abstraction. “Left” and “right”, moreover, are words that in political parlance denote political preferences. Is it possible that all these distortions happened due to an excessive politicization of artistic vision? Due to the interference in art of real politics, be it “right” or “left”? Let these questions remain a Damoclean sword without presupposing a definite answer.

Gutov’s works are a literalizing embodiment of the history of art. A demonstration of practically all of the 20th century’s art history stems from a simple and natural act of circling a sculpture. In a traditional sculpture in the round, the viewer gets different perspectives of the same volume; in Gutov’s sculptures, on the other hand, this volume does not exist, and each new perspective denies the previous one.

This is history of art as a physical movement of a body in space.



Anatoly Osmolovsky