Georgy Kolotov

Talgat Berikov

Isken Sydykov

Roman Kirichenko

Alla Kivachitskaya

Boris Chukhovich, Oksana Shatalova

Bishkek Constructivism

(The exhibition “STILLS – Enthusiasm: Summary”)

The exhibition aims not only at summarizing the year-long project by repeating identified formulas but also at identifying interesting trends in photo-art of the region as well as prospective of development of our declared curatorial goals and strategies through understanding of the knowledge gained and sticking to announced theme (in this case – Enthusiasm).

The final exhibition will be held in the capital city which provoked a regional myth about “unique creativity of Kyrgyzstan”, about “Bishkek creative anomaly” and for us, it made a lot of sense to dedicate this exhibition to one of the most outstanding tendencies specifically related to Bishkek photo-art.

When studying works by Kyrgyz artists one can notice that they seem to be inspired by plastic experience of international avant-garde of 10s-30s of the past century. Geometrism and actively used “dynamic diagonals”, non-façade angles, playing with reflexes, shades, reflections (Natalya Andrianova, Anna Zima, Alla Kivachitskaya, Roman Kirichenko, Isken Sydykov), objectless linear etudes  (Georgy Kolotov), manifestation of laboratory-experimental type of creativity [1] (group “…graphy”) in artworks of the final exposition the concept Enthusiasm is expressed not by a story but by a plastic language. Besides Bishkek artists the exhibition will feature artists from other Central Asian countries whose works present similar plastics (Gaisha Madanova, Galim Madanov [Almaty], Vitaly Mordovin [Tashkent]).

While conventionally naming this line “Bishkek constructivism” we are not trying to identify the core of this style. Artworks that give birth to linear energetism of orthodox constructivism as well as interest in factures and surfaces which inspire new trends are believed to be attributed to this formal course. The same can be assumed on media genealogy: the exhibition puts together artworks that refer to both photo-heritage and further media ancestors such as painting and assemblage. In other words, the photographs by Bishkek artists revive some integrated formalizing “avant-garde” spirit.

Of course, contemporary artistry cannot be avant-garde in its essence; it just can refer to the relevant archive. In artworks presented at the exhibition a man is often viewed as an element of a geometric composition but not nearly a cog in a global mechanism (like in photo works of classics of avant-garde): modern “visual constructions” can illustrate a game of urban rhythms, embody metaphors of insulation in city jungles, comment on motifs of pantheistic of dissolution in an urban landscape or can be open experiments of retro-reconstruction.

But the main difference between CA-constructivism and constructivism of 1920s is not in ideological posing, lack of mottoes, but in presence of mottoes, besides, not in just presence of constructivist mythology proper but in further experience of Soviet art. Through constructivist compositions of the exhibition one can view Soviet paintings and films of 1920s-30s (“Soviet Idealism” according to Dyogot), stern style of 1960s, memorial spirit of painting of 1970s, and even derisiveness of Sotsart of 1980s. Thus, today’s constructivism, which used to be a projection of the future is dramatically transformed and marked by the collective memory of Soviet generations. Changing the direction from future to the past is not just a retro-fantasy but a qualitative transformation of the reference field of the created new-constructive signs. It does not even concern the new signs. These are signs remembered through the prism of obtained experience of the “original constructivism, which today is enriched with biographies, imperfection, inaccuracy, irony, fatigue, and lassitude, sorrow, melancholy and absurd. All these features can also be viewed as “carefree” artistry, “optimistic” openness, “sacral” derisiveness, “stern” formality, each time derived from their avant-garde prototypes. In the meanwhile, they still have their hidden existential filling of their second and third senses which personalize today’s constructivism to spite pure essences and allegoric dramas of Russian avant-garde.

The reverse perspective proper, when the formal element which used to act as a base for “New Art” stops its transformation, is an innovative representation not only of avant-garde itself (with its steps upwards to the top of the absolute) but also of random secondary reminiscences of contemporary art essence of which refutes the global and systemized. Thus, we face deconstruction with the qualities of construction, formalization which does not exclude discourse, with profanation which does not exclude an icon and at the end with an endeavor to get over the complex of all-out simulation which is characteristic for contemporary art. When the later, with a reflectory affectation seeks to appear greater than it is in reality, “Bishkek constructivism” objectively goes beyond the frames of the space and the role that it claims. This is where this oddity and magnetism of this “energy”, “tension”, and “aspiration” come from. They express something antipodal and at the same time akin energies, tensions and aspirations of the avant-garde utopias.

The exhibition “Summary” ends the STILLS collection of exhibitions. It has no reportage stories in it, regular representations, rhetoric of identities and its final mission is not accumulation of the listed above. Summarizing our experiments of visualizations of concepts, “Summary” became logical reason for conceptualization of visuality. The fact that summarizing STIILS turned to echeloned perspectives which opens referential archive of Central Asian art up to the beginning of avant-garde exonerates the originally dictated direction of creation of the “anthology”. Enclosed into formal experiments of “Bishkek constructivism” the genealogy of our collective art experiment is qualified as “Central Asian Anthology of Images” driven by exclusive opportunity of disclosing global in private which in our case was taken by artists.

[1] Experiments with shooting and development are practiced (see the text), including collective ones, for example in experiments with multi-exposition – when one film is exposed by co-authors in turn.

Translation by Faruh Kuziev