Apart from showing E-E Kozlov's contact prints from the 1980s and pictures of guests at Kozlov's Berlin studio The Russian Field, we decided to present, as a kind of homage to artists shaping the artistic landscape of Petersburg's art centre Puskinskaya 10, two series of portraits Kozlov created in 1997. One of the series is dedicated to Andrey Khlobystin, and the other one to Oleg Kotelnikov, Kozlov's art companion from the 1980s. Both participated in his “2 x 3 m” collection more>>.

In the mid nineteen-nineties, Khlobystin and Kotelnikov spent some time in Berlin. During their stay, they were frequent visitors to Kozlov's studio Russkoee Polee /The Russian Field. The studio was large enough to convert it into a gallery, and in 1994, we started to present works of Russian artists. In March 1996, we presented Kotelnikov’s solo show "Antarctos" with paintings, graphic works and an installation, and in November the same year, Khlobystin's series of collages “Great Lovers”. At that time, Khlobystin was working at Berlin’s Künstlerhaus Bethanien, having been awared a stipend by this instituion. I wrote about it in my article “Kunst ins Leben. Die russische Kunst im Berlin der neunziger Jahre und was daraus wurde“ (Art into Life. Russian art in the Berlin of the nineties and what became of it), 50 Jahre Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin 2024 External link >>.

With his portraits of Kotelnikov and Khlobystin, Kozlov continued his personal tradition of creating portraits inspired by photographs, only that in this case, they were based on my pictures. I took them at his studio on different occasions. Oleg Kotelnikov is seen wearing a paper mask, while Andrey Khlobystin is holding a paper cut-out for a collage in front of his face; both artists look rather extravagant.

For his portraits, Kozlov used fanfold paper for line printers: Each sheet is connected to the neighbouring ones by a perforation, in this way constituting a continuous length of paper (“continuous stationary”). The paper is then folded in a zig-zag way along these perforations, thus forming one big stack feeding the printer. Fanfold paper is often provided with additional layers of (carbonless) copy paper. Accordingly, once the printing process is finished, the sheets must be separated from each other along the perforation and the copies detached from the originals.

In this particular case, each sheet consisted of three layers of paper, two of which were made of carbonless copy paper. The copies allowed the artist to experiment with what may be called “theme and variation” – an approach he often persued in his graphic works, for instance, in his cycle “E-E Fairy Tale” (1982. 1997. 2007) more >>. Another example is his series “E-E WEIGHT. SLEEP”, begun in 2009 more >> and continuing to this day. Since 2018, he has been combining the sheets of millimetre paper used as top pages with the copy pages from the stationary paper.

(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov E-E-WEIGHT 26. 08. 2019 to 16.01.2020 Segment of the first copy layer from the fanfold paper – pages one to three of a total of nine. Below, to the left, is the top page of the series, drawn on millimetre paper. The picture demonstrates the unmirrored–mirrored sequence of the copies. With each page, the pattern loses part of its visibilty, and on page 9 (outside the picture), it is almost invisible. Kozlov afterwards separated the pages and added yellow dots to pages five to nine.
(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov E-E-WEIGHT 26. 08. 2019 to 16.01.2020 Mixed media on millimetre paper, 20.9 x 29.7 cm, 2020 Top page for the copies on fan-fold paper above		(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov E-E-WEIGHT 13. 11. 2024. Work in progress. Below the blue millimetre paper is a stack of fan-fold paper producing copies of the drawing.

For his portraits, Kozlov started by drawing with a pencil on the top sheet of a stack of unseparated paper. Hence, if the top sheet is drawn on with pressure, its image will appear on the sheets beneath, getting mirrored with every other fold and also getting lighter with each successive layer. Having finished the portrait on the top layer, Kozlov disconnected the sheets from each other along the perforations, but left the decorative strips of punch holes along the longitudinal borders. He then continued working on the portraits separately – seven with respect to Kotelnikov and six for Khlobystin – drawing, spraying, and applying other additional colour elements. In this way, each portrait is highly individual without denying its common roots with the other ones. Looking at a series, one might feel challenged to establish the original order of the zig-zag fold.
There is also a third series, dedicated to artist and film-maker Andrius Ventslova, another visitor of the Russian Field. E-E Kozlov called them “Made in Russia”.