BEYOND STEREOTYPES

These days unexpected and rapid transformations can be seen in the fine arts of Kazakhstan. The most surprising thing is radical changes in sculpture as one of the most conservative spheres which is firmly committed to established traditions.

It sounds unbelievable that a sculptor organising and participating in creative exhibitions and contests before their 50th birthday was prohibited in Soviet Kazakhstan. This kind of monumental art has had an officious nature from the beginning and has been subject to ideological attitudes, that curbed a sculptor’s freedom.

For the 30 years since the independence of Kazakhstan, innovations in this field were showcased only slowly and were not obvious. And that’s completely understandable. Existing ideals were ruined, and new ones took time to appear. Creative unions lost government support while monumental art needs huge investments.

Gradually everything returns to normal, however.To a certain extent the tried and tested traditions of social realism are still being used as well as gathered experience of academic schools along with some new innovations. It’s much more noticeable in chamber sculpture where artists have been given a big opportunity for expression of creative freedom. Acceptance of their points of view is more commonplace now.

Kazakh sculptures keep a connection with reality, however. There is recognition of their responsibility for the proposed concepts, incorporating social and personal conflicts around them. Their art reacts to the pulse of modern life challenging usual criteria, and also attempts to focus on the artist’s personal background. Direct feedback at the exhibition sites is very important to artists, after all by creating their works they wait for a live dialogue with the audience. Multiple components play an important role here: the artist’s audacity, unpredictability, unexpectedness of techniques, angles, and materials, quite often shock in terms of value, sensation, excitement and even arrogance in ways of presenting the object.

Vagif Rakhman is a master who was recognised in soviet time but stood apart from his colleagues. He has a solid academic training but was always known as “the cat that walked by himself”, avoiding official orders. During perestroika, Vagif Rakhman was highly valued in the West where he presented many of his bronze sculptures. His passion for stylistic features of hyperrealism and neorealism did not go unnoticed. His return to Kazakhstan was marked by works of entirely new type. The range of his message became deeper, more sincere, more ironic, more democratic, and more intriguing. A new scale of works and synthesis of different and unexpected combinations of materials provokes viewers. Small forms seem to hint at decorativeness as the main artistic dignity of works, but with a closer look you can see a thoughtful substance.

The sculpture “She” impresses with its beauty and sensual energy of bronze and bright glass. The first impression is confusion stemming from the lack of torso of a bohemian belle that makes you think. It’s possible that the artist sought to show that chasing after external attributes women have no capacity for serious reflection. And maybe it’s increasing feminisation that pushes back the social status of modern women.

The sculpture “Friends Table” attracts you with its bronze toning of the table as well as sculpture’s details with an amazing play of shadow and light contrast. All details reveal the hand of a great master who has skill to work with any natural material. But the accent here is not on the aesthetic expression. The lack of human images does not prevent it conveying the psychology of relationships through the variety of hand gestures. We can find such metaphorical statements in other works like “Incarnation” and “Challenge”.

Liliya Pozdnyakova has a delicate and impressionable nature with heightened reflection of her surrounding reality. Being an artist with her own established style, she suddenly changed her creative path when she became dissatisfied with tightness of the picture plane. Today’s dynamic life with its rapidly changing moral conflicts demanded another tool from the artist and formed the need not to react to others’ positions, but to create her own one with adequate ways of expression. Usage of the short-lived material didn’t prevent the depth of philosophical reflection.

Her sculptural composition “Wandering Angel” is made of egg cartons, old paper, plastic bottles and pieces of wire (all considered waste materials). The point is not from what, but how and for whom? We can see the accelerated transformation of a person inside and outside and their place in society, thus breaking ageold foundations, moral barriers, ethical and aesthetic ideas. The sculpture consists of two identical people connected by one root. The eternal dualism of two opposite principles inside each human - good and evil, light and darkness, emotional and intellectual - accompanies people until the end of life. It’s hard to accept or abandon something that constitutes your inner self. The technique used creates an illusion of long lasting material that is strengthened by relief texture.

“Overcoming the fog. The Breath” is Liliya’s burning reply to the bloody events on the 5th of January 2022 in Kazakhstan. It’s a three-part composition representing a relief and two separate three-dimensional shapes. True emotional immersion of the artist led her to create a piece of art with a social commentary and involvement in the tragedy of that situation. Relief implementation of the composition conveys the atmosphere: shaky and ominously low-lying mist, fire outbreaks, continuous shooting, burning cars, on the background of which an unwavering standard-bearer’s figure stands. Soaring above the golden eagle is a symbol of the released bird from the flag and a sign of accumulated public protest and advancing changings. In the foreground we see the warrior with closed eyes, lowered hands who is taking his first breath while he escapes from his long-running bondage.

Liliya’s ability to be relevant and find the culmination allows her to convey events as they happened, with maximum psychological expression. Her pain can’t leave anyone indifferent. Form-creating searches were like sniper shots: right on target. Newspaper texture intensifies the imagery of the public’s approach to the incident. The work seems aimed at moral, ethical, aesthetic, and ecological cleansing of society.

These are only two examples of modern sculpture, which demonstrate that our masters learn new meanings in modern worldwide sculpture. Sustainability of value representations about past art that connected to concepts such as eternity, memory and three dimensional space has given way to modern dynamic formations that use a variety of forms, techniques and materials.

Now sculpture is a mysterious kind of art that opens an infinite field of creative opportunities, and there’s a hope that Kazakh artists are going to use it.