Dimitri Kozyrev "Lost Landscapes"

Dimitri kozyrev november 15 – december 11, 2010 LOST Landscapes 1

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FRONT COVER DETAIL: LOST EDGE #25, 2008 Acrylic and oils on canvas 60”

x

48”

RIGHT DETAIL: LOST EDGE #25, 2008 Acrylic and oils on canvas 60” x 48”

Dimitri kozyrev november 15 – December 11, 2010 Lost Landscapes

GalleRy DirectoRs David Eichholtz & Richard Barger

130 Lincoln Avenue, Suite D, Santa Fe, NM 87501 | p (505) 983-9555 | f (505) 983-1284 www.DavidRichardContemporary.com | info@DavidRichardContemporary.com

Deleuze, Cubism and the becoming of 2

durée: crystallized space and Bergsonian flux in the paintings of Dimitri Kozyrev

by Colin Gardner Professor of Critical Theory and Integrative Studies University of California, Santa Barbara

It is the work of art that produces within itself and upon itself its own effects, and is filled with them and nourished by them: the work of art is nourished by the truths it engenders. – Gilles Deleuze .1

Until recently, Henri Bergson and

Russian-born Dimitri Kozyrev can be read

Gilles Deleuze’s complementary theories of

as an attempt to update and revitalize this

the virtual have had very little scholarly or

stalled Cubistic debate by paradoxically

critical application to the visual arts, partic-

making the fragment itself – obviously

ularly painting. This is hardly surprising giv-

anathema to Bergson - the vehicle for a di-

en Henri Bergson’s early antipathy towards

rect access to Time as a manifestation of

the analytic, ‘scientific’ Cubism of modern-

incommensurable difference. For example,

ists such as Braque, Picasso and Gris, which

in the early (2001-3) “Lost Landscapes”

he dismissed, along with cinema, as a static

and “Black Square” series, Kozyrev’s sun-

and distortingly linear Euclidean spatializa-

drenched Southern California topographies

tion of the real experience of durée, which

expressed a specifically Deleuzian (and

he more accurately described as an internal,

by extension, Bergsonian) sense of time

qualitative multiplicity of pure intuition that

and space: clear-cut Euclidian geometries

defied both segmentation and traditional

were subverted in favor of a more hyper-

distinctions between virtual and actual,

bolic, ‘autopian’ trajectory, as if the world

memory and objective matter. Instead, in

were viewed from a speeding automobile

Creative Evolution, Bergson called for a phi-

or airplane cockpit, or through the splin-

losophy of science where the philosopher

tered, kaleidoscopic fragments of shattered

will see “the material world melt back into

glass. In other words, Kozyrev employed a

a simple flux, a continuity of flowing, a be-

fluidly dynamic painterly vocabulary along-

coming.”

side montage-like segmentation in order

2

In many respects, the works of

to deny the spectator the comforts of a

1. Gilles Deleuze, Proust and Signs, trans. Richard Howard, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000, p. 154.

2. Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983, p. 369.

sustaining visual ground. Occasionally, we

of vast expanses of cool, billboard-like col-

were encouraged to focus on a specific

ors which “invade” the scene so that it is

detail but more often than not Kozyrev de-

often difficult to discern the dividing line

territorialized our perception, as our mind

between nature and simulacrum, sky and

was quickly caught up in the overall ‘line of

earth, foreground and background, aerial

flight’ of anticipating what is yet to come,

view and ground-level perspective. This

grasping the immediate moment in our pe-

constantly shifting spatial dynamic under-

ripheral vision, or recalling what we have

mines the cone-of-vision, single point per-

just witnessed in our virtual memory, as if

spective of the traditional landscape so that

simultaneously viewing the world through

we are caught in a cubistic spatial limbo,

a rear view mirror. Thus, for Kozyrev as for

unsure whether we are in virtual or actual

Bergson, “Duration is the continuous prog-

space. The result is a collapse of linear or

ress of the past which gnaws into the future

chronological time into overlapping shards

and which swells as it advances. And as the

of active memory, in which past (or more

past grows without ceasing, so also there is

accurately, the virtual, which for Bergson

no limit to its preservation.”

contains the sum aggregate of all pasts),

3

Kozyrev attempted to express this

present and future collapse into pure durée.

middle ground between objective specific-

In “All Is Well,” a subsequent series

ity and subjective incommensurability by

of diptychs, Kozyrev applied similar principles to his appropriation of 1920s avant-

Occasionally we are en-

garde historical sources. Drawing upon the

couraged to focus on a

matist design principles of his native Rus-

Cubo-Futurist, Constructivist and Supre-

specific detail but more

sia as well as the utilitarian pragmatism of

often than not Kozyrev

these modernist tropes with a Vermeer-like

the German Bauhaus, Kozyrev juxtaposed

deterritorialized our

Dutch interior or the depiction of a ruined

perception

specifically avant-garde contextual logic

bunker in Finland, exploding the images’ into a postmodern pastiche of histori-

representing the gaps in our attention rath-

cal culture, folding together the legacy of

er than the concrete object or landscape

16th-century mercantilism with the brutal

per se. Thus in this body of work details are

effects of mechanized warfare (it’s no ac-

sketched in - a line of trees, a rough hori-

cident that camouflage was invented during

zon line, the receding lines of street lamps,

World War One by a painter, Guirand de

a curved section of freeway - so that topog-

Scevola, modeling its optical effects on les-

raphy is reduced to a series of minimalistic

sons learned from Cubism). In this way, ev-

signifiers. Instead of a picturesque or pan-

ery picture becomes grist for the painter’s

oramic spectacle, we are made more aware

cubistic mill, acting as building blocks in a

3. I bid., p. 4.

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LOST EDGE #22, 2008, 48” X 60” Acrylic and oils on canvas

new constructivist aesthetic, in which anything can be juxtaposed against anything 4

else, and in which genealogical history dies in order to be reborn as pure production, as pure painting. Thus even a series of Malevich-like monochromatic squares lose their Suprematist, trans-rational theoretical origins and become another form of mental landscape, isolated cogs in a much larger, untotalizable artistic machine, a machine of pure resonance.

In this respect, Kozyrev’s method

closely resembles that of Marcel Proust, particularly in their common use of transversal trajectories that bridge the gaps across and between seemingly autonomous spatio-temporal entities. A transversal is a passage without interval that affirms a specific difference, all the better to disclose the essence of time that underpins all apparent artistic “unities.” Thus, in his two most recent series, “Lost Edge” and “Lost One,” Kozyrev creates transverse intersections between actual, physical landscapes – particularly those ravaged by war - man-made military structures and architectures, and their corresponding mental equivalents, blurring the distinction between material and immaterial. Once again his main building block is the fragment, or perhaps more accurately, the ruin. It is significant, for example, that in Proust, the little patch of yellow wall that young Marcel admires in Vermeer’s View of Delft becomes a greater manifestation of the essence of art-as-time than the picture as a whole, instigating an implicating series of signs and correspondences that reach across linear time and space. Thus, as Deleuze points out, “The dragons of Balbec,

4. Deleuze, Proust and Signs, p. 115.

the patch of wall in the Vermeer, the little phrase of Vinteuil, mysterious viewpoints, tell us the same thing as Chateaubriand’s wind: they function without ‘sympathy,’ they do not make the work into an organic totality, but rather each acts as a fragment that determines a crystallization.”

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Kozyrev employs this crystalliza-

tion to implicate and critique both past and current totalitarian regimes (most significantly the U.S.S.R. under Stalin), their policies of militarist expansionism and their tendency to co-opt and/or censor all avant-garde movements into an overriding ideological purview. “Lost Edge” thus has a double register, connoting the blunting of the cutting edge of the avant-garde in both its artistic and military definitions, raising the question of whether this edge can ever be re-honed and sharpened for future creative use. Kozyrev achieves this transversal connection between avant-gardes through manifest and latent reference to an aggregate of spatial fragments that interlock and imbricate each other like cogs and gears

in an elaborate machine. Thus we see allu-

field of durée. Like Proust, Kozyrev com-

sions to Malevich’s early, iconic pictures of

bines the idea of death with a dilation of

peasant women (c. 1912), which represent

time in which the fragment or ruin becomes

an uneasy fusion of neo-primitive style with

the self-determined producer of resonanc-

Cubism and Futurism, the Cubo-Futurist

es that transcend historical specificities. A

masterpiece, The Knife Grinder (1912-13)

broken fence, the silhouette of a German

and the then infamous Black Square of 1915.

steel helmet, giant shards of concrete, jag-

These early utopian references resonate

ged Suprematist geometries (as if El Lissitz-

in juxtaposition with ruins of the fortifica-

ky’s sparring squares and wedges had been

tions of the Mannerhiem Line, which, like its

torn asunder by an unforgiving shredder),

more famous equivalent, The Maginot Line

the bared skeleton of a looming Modern-

in France, was built to protect Finland from

ist edifice, a wintry landscape – all collapse

IN...”lost edge”...kozyrev creates transverse intersections between actual, physical landscapes...and their corresponding mental equivalents... the advances of its bellicose neighbor, in this

together as an assemblage of difference(s),

case the Soviet military avant-garde. Like

where time is dilated as if viewed through

all such attempts at clear cut demarcation,

a telescope. “Such a work,” says Deleuze,

Finland’s attempt at self-defense proved

“having for subject time itself, has no need

impotent in the face of modern techniques

to write [or, in this case, paint] by apho-

of warfare (Blitzkrieg, like Shock and Awe,

risms: it is in the meanders and rings of an

paid no lip service to the linear bulwarks of

anti-Logos style that it makes the requisite

bunkers and trenches, no matter how so-

detours in order to gather up the ultimate

phisticated) and today the fortifications lie

fragments, to sweep along at different

in ruins, reclaimed by nature as they have

speeds all the pieces, each one of which re-

become progressively overgrown by weeds

fers to a different whole, to no whole at all,

and grasses.

or to no other whole than that of style.”

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Interestingly, this model of the

A transverse style, one might add, that will

vegetal is perhaps the work’s metaphorical

save painting so that it can live on, live to

saving grace, for although it alludes to an

die yet another death, the better to affirm

intrinsic and inevitable degeneration and

the creative evolution of duration itself.

co-option within both areas of the avantgarde, it is also a driving force of art’s potential renewal, for, as in Proust and Bergson, the machine of eternal decay is also proof positive of the forced movement of Time, and, by extension, the creative force

5. Ibid.

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LOST EDGE #20, 2008 48” x 60” Acrylic and oils on canvas

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LOST EDGE #22, 2008 48” x 60” Acrylic and oils on canvas

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LOST EDGE #25, 2008 60” x 48” Acrylic and oils on canvas

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LOST EDGE #28, 2009 48” x 48” Acrylic and oils on canvas

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99.999 SERIES #1, 2009 24" x 34" Acrylic and oils on canvas

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99.999 SERIES #2, 2009 24" x 34" Acrylic and oils on canvas 99.999 SERIES #5, 2009 24” x 34” Acrylic and oils on canvas

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BLACK SQUARE #19, 2002 53.5" x 34.5" Acrylic on canvas

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BLACK SQUARE #20, 2003 41" x 35.5" Acrylic on canvas

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WHITE SQUARE - BLACK SERIES #23, 2002 48" x 36" Acrylic on canvas

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LOST LANDSCAPE #6, 2001 46" x 48" Acrylic on canvas

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LOST LANDSCAPE #8, 2001 48" x 72" Acrylic on canvas

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LOST LANDSCAPE #4, 2000 46" x 48" Acrylic on canvas

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LOST LANDSCAPE #10, 2002 44" x 46" Acrylic on canvas

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D imitri Kozyrev Selected One Person Exhibitions:

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2012

Mark Moore Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2011

Last One, Benrimon Contemporary, New York, NY

2010

Lost Landscapes, David Richard Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM

2009

Lost Edge, Mark Moore Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2006

Golf Coast Museum of Art, Largo, FL

2005

Cirrus Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2004

Journeys II, Cirrus Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2003

Drawings, Cirrus Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2001

Lost Landscapes, Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara, CA

Selected Group Exhibitions: 2010

Gimme Shelter, Mixed Greens Gallery, New York, NY

2010

Sites of Memory, Stephan Stoyanov Gallery, New York, NY

2010

Made in Tucson, MOCA, Tucson, AZ

2009

VIII International Biennale, Museum of Modern Art, Krasnoyarsk, Russia

2009

Gary H. Brown Collection, University Art Museum, UCSB, Santa Barbara, CA

2009

Trouble In Paradise: Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ

2009

Fast Forward: Channing Peake Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA

2008

Future Tense: reshaping the landscape, Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY

2008

Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College, Los Angeles, CA

2008

Claremont Graduate University, Pomona, CA

2007

Ultrasonic International II, Mark Moore Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2006

F[acts]igures,Artwalkamsterdam,Amsterdam,Netherlands

2005

Incognito, Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA

2005

Fineline, New Drawings, Cirrus Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

2004

Armory Art Fair, New York, NY

2004

Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara, CA

2003

Road Show, George Adams Gallery, New York, NY

2003

Abstracted, Limn Gallery, San Francisco, CA

2002

Snapshot, Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, OR

2002

Flat Files Rendez Vous, Post vs. Pierogi Gallery, Post, Los Angeles, CA

2001

Auxiliary Settings, Cirrus Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

Publications/Reviews Andrews, Scott. Art Ltd., “Artist Profile”, November, 2010 Regan, Margaret. Tucson Weekly, “Cities and Earth”, July 22, 2010

Featured artist, www.guernicamag.com, “Lost Edge”, May 2010 Featured artist, www.artmargins.com, August 9, 2009 Pagel, David. Los Angeles Times, “The Shapes of Powerlessness”, March 13, 2009 Schwyzer, Elizabeth. The Independent, “Fast Forward 2009”, March, 2009 Woodard,Josef. Santa Barbara News-Press,”Then and Now”, Feb.13,2009 Frank, Peter. Artweek, “Looky See” at Otis College, October, 2008 Valdez, Cynthia. THE Magazine-LA, Looky See:A Summer Show, October, 2008 Walsh, Daniella. The OC Register, Taking a Fresh Look at the Land, October 1,2006 Green, Tyler www.artsjournal.com , Top 10 of 2005, January 2006 Frank, Peter. LAWeekly, Picks of the week, August 5-11, 2005 Green, Tyler www.artsjournal.com, Around LA, June 27, 2005 Pagel, David. Los Angeles Times, Giving Substance to a Virtual World, May 13, 2005 Green, Tyler www.artsjournal.com, On Miami Scope, December, 2004 Green, Tyler. www.artsjournal.com, Modern Art Notes, March 17,2004 Pagel, David. Los Angeles Times, November, 2003 Hannum, Terence.www.panel-house.com, Raid in Chicago,Nov., 2003 Artner, G. Alan. Chicago Tribune, All’s fair at ‘Art Chicago’, May 10, 2003 Janku Richard, Laura. Artweek, Abstract-ed , May, 2003 Myers, Holly. Los Angeles Times, Reinventing the Wheels, Feb.28, 2003 Pagel, David. Los Angeles Times, September, 2002 Crowder, Joan. SB News-Press, Faculty on Display, May 3, 2002 Miles, Christopher. Artforum, Critic’s picks, February, 2002 Pagel, David. Los Angeles Times, Kozyrev Details the Open Road at Hurtling Speed,

Jan.19,2002

Gipe, Lawrence. The Independent, On the road with Dimitri, May 31, 2001 New American Paintings: MFA Edition. 2000 Honors and Awards 2008

IV Painting Prize Castellon County Council(finalist), Spain

2005

Art Omi Residency

2000

Abrams Prize, University of California, Santa Barbara

1999

Levitan Fellowship, University of California, Santa Barbara

1999

KCBX Graduate Art Fellowship, University of California, Santa Barbara

Education: 2000

University of California, Santa Barbara, MFA in Studio Arts

1997

Ohio University, BFA in Painting

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ISBN 978-0-9827872-0-5 PRICE $10.00 © 2010 DAVID RICHARD CONTEMPORARY, LLC

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130 Lincoln Avenue, Suite D, Santa Fe, NM 87501 | p (505) 983-9555 | f (505) 983-1284 www.DavidRichardContemporary.com | info@DavidRichardContemporary.com