Vladimir KRAVTSEV.
COLLAGES, OBJECTS, INSTALLATIONS
March 21 - April 19, 2001

Press release

Contemporary Art Gallery "OkNo"
supporting by Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation), Russia
presents
project "Vladimir Kravtsev. Collages. Objects. Installations"
March 21 - April 19, 2001

In his artistic practice, Vladimir Kravtsev makes extensive use of ready-made materials and objects. Incorporated as an integral part into the context of an objet d'art, they become self-sufficient elements characterized by sculpturesque expression. Thus, Scotch tape, as the author has willed, is turned from a packing material into an artistic substance, imparting an air of aesthetic completeness to what the artist has made.

The tragic combination of the Scotch-tape lines in the "Black-White" series of collages reveals itself as a sign of the artist's intense inner life. The smooth Scotch-tape surface in the "News from London" series acts as a synonym of objectivity of the outward, counterbalancing the airiness of the clouds of Indian ink spread over the sheet of paper.

Kravtsev's works establish new modes of synthesizing arts, combining them into a wholly finished system: paper acquires a sculptural relief with him, forming a contrasting whole with the smooth line of Scotch tape (getting an imprint from a wooden plate on a sheet of paper, he puts the "paper" plates together, forming a surface, which comes "loose" when cut by the Scotch tape).

The interaction between the pulsatory painting and the sculpturesque volumes in Kravtsev's objets d'art generates the interaction between two different kinds of space: the one that is real, created by Nature itself (the texture of a wooden plate), and the other that is represented and created by painting. The structure of a work of art being changed as a whole, a new system of relations between the outward appearance and the inner space arises.

Svetlana SHLYAPNIKOVA

Opening day is March 21 at 18.00

Working time: 12.00-19.00 every day.
Admission free.
The gallery address: prospekt Pobedy, 160 (Robin-Bobin).
Gallery "OkNo" in Internet: http://www.oknogallery.ru/
Director of project - Dmitry Latukhin
Curator of gallery -- Svetlana Shlyapnikova