E-Ev.g.e.n.i.j ..K.o.z.l.o.v Berlin |
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E-Ev.g.e.n.i.j ..K.o.z.l.o.v Berlin |
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home // E-E // biographie // art // eros // Leningrad 80s // Valentin Kozlov // 2 x 3m // events // lageplan // kontakt /
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(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov: ART >>
(E-E) EVGENIJ KOZLOVE-E DRAFTS63 Collages from the 1980s and 1990s – and related works |
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Text and layout: Hannelore Fobo, December 2020
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Page 3: The Atlas of Ontology “E-E Drafts” constitutes only a small part of the material the artist gathered and used for his work: it includes not only many more magazine cut-outs and even entire books, but much of his own material – notes, diaries, notebooks, photographs (his own and, later, mine), and reproductions of his work. Besides, I am not at all saying that all of Kozlov’s works have some visible roots – this is by far not the case. E-E is an excellent draughtsman and has often converted his inner visions to visual art without drawing on any sources. Seen in this light, and with only twenty-tow of its images identified, it might seem that the vast majority of images from “E-E Drafts” left no traces in (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov’s work, or perhaps only indirectly. Yet what makes “E-E Drafts” unique is the way the collage panels reflect the artist’s specific method of collecting and structuring, that is, of producing, such resource material – which makes them works of art in their own right. Although Kozlov’s main source is “everyday life” – and this goes for his own photography in particular – he takes great care in selecting specific images from “all there is”. While the subject matter as such is important, even more important how it is presented. He selects and adapts what reveals to him some type of uncommon or striking feature, or what allows him to continue elaborating in his work an element of strangeness, which is, however, contrary to the freakishness and oddity of objects we find in a cabinet of wonder. Strangeness triggers an alchemic process in art - in the words of Homunculus from Goethe’s Faust:
Life-elements as the recipes direct, With caution fitting each to other. Ponder The What - to solve the How still harder try, While through a little piece of world I wander To find the dot to put upon the i. Accomplished then will the great purpose be. (translated by George Madison Priest, external link >>)
Three black and white pictures in the lower left corner of panel 19 of “E-E Drafts”, each displaying a portrait of a man, exemplify Kozlov’s approach. The artist marked them with arrows, adding a note Эффекты на коже – [light] effects on the skin. The photographic reproductions accentuate the transition between the lighter and darker parts of the faces, thereby creating unnatural contours around the eyes, on the cheeks, and on the forehead, respectively. While those are unwanted effects in a photographic portrait, they can produce interesting result in a painting or drawing.
In a portrait of a woman from 1999, Faces in the Sun (Лица на Солнце, acrylic on canvas, 120 x 114 cm), Kozlov enhanced the shadow/light contrast on the face to the maximum extent possible: black shades contour the woman’s white face around the eyes, nose and lips, stressing the form of her skull, and these black shades merge with her black hair without any transitions. Like an extravagant headdress, this compact yet ornamental black shape has both a decorative and a protective function – as if combining with a centurion’s helmet one of those voluminous renaissance hoods worn over a coif. As a matter of fact, in a first version of this portrait, Kozlov was even more radical in his approach, but then enlarged the white areas in and outside the face. The composition now appears almost translucent, as if we were looking right through the face.
Trying to define this kind of strangeness, a comparison with Cubism might help. Cubism is strange in that if fuses into a single view different perceptions of an object, that is, fuses views seen from different angles – Cubism creates spatial simultaneity. Kozlov also fuses different perceptions, but we might call them perceptions of the outer world and perceptions of the inner world – temporal simultaneity. To put it differently: if Cubism is going around an object, then Kozlov is going through the outer shape of an object – in a metaphorical sense and in a literal sense, too. In panel 20, he placed a picture with three ladies in strapless gowns next to an anatomical view of the left shoulder – the collarbone, humerus, and the respective muscles – connecting these pictures with an explanatory note: продолжение размера и женских фигур с постепенным обнажением / continuation of size and female figures with gradual exposure.
The cut-outs are from the 1990s, but figures with semi-transparent limbs revealing bones and muscles appear in Kozlov’s work earlier, for instance in one of his portraits of Agnes, an untitled portrait from 1989. We recognise a similar semi-transparency in the left arm of a sailor in “Seaman’s silence”, a drawing from 1993 inspired by an image from panel 13 more on page 5.
On Panel 20, next to the cut-outs with text, are two more images with anatomy illustrations, and below are three identical pictures of a surfer balancing on a surfboard with his arms stretched out. In medicine, studying anatomy means dissecting a corpse, but as an artist, Kozlov studies anatomy to create movement: to enliven with expression what is simply a structure, so that it may become a dynamic force, like that of surfers or dancers. We can feel such a dynamic force in a small sketch from 1991 displaying two figures, each holding a planet by some kind of horns of ropes. Muscles and bones, quickly outlined with markers, render tension as well as relaxation, lending the figures an almost physical presence.
In the course of time, Kozlov’s intriguing configurations of human anatomy have developed a striking richness of forms, deviating from realism, as in the approximately five hundred works on paper from the cycle Century XX, part two. Yet these forms are true in a different, deeper sense – they reproduce not what we see, but the artist’s perception of what there is. Kozlov noticed this idea in a text image from 2015:
My not being able to see well physically [with my eyes] is not what matters – but that within my spirit I should perceive rightly. (Translation by Kieran Scraffe)
This approach is contrary to Walter Benjamin’s, who required art to deliver a scientific use, too. In his seminal essay from 1936 The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Benjamin promoted the mutual penetration of art and science with the help of photography and film: In der Tat läßt sich von einem innerhalb einer bestimmten Situation sauber – wie ein Muskel an einem Körper – herauspräparierten Verhalten kaum mehr angeben, wodurch es stärker fesselt: durch seinen artistischen Wert oder durch seine wissenschaftliche Verwertbarkeit. Es wird eine der revolutionären Funktionen des Films sein, die künstlerische und die wissenschaftliche Verwertung der Photographie, die vordem meist auseinander fielen, als identisch erkennbar zu machen. Actually, of a screened behavior item which is neatly brought out in a certain situation, like a muscle of a body, it is difficult to say which is more fascinating, its artistic value or its value for science. To demonstrate the identity of the artistic and scientific uses of photography which heretofore usually were separated will be one of the revolutionary functions of the film. (Translated by Harry Zohn, 1969)Consequently, Benjamin favoured photography to panel painting, which he considered as having become obsolete (Panel painting is a creation of the Middle Ages, and nothing guarantees its uninterrupted existence). Clearly, if we are looking for the scientific uses of photography, it makes a resurgence of Leonardo da Vinci‘s anatomic studies also obsolete. With his collection of images, Kozlov, however, is looking not for scientific realism. Rather, he is looking for life’s potential – a potential that may be unfolded through art. In other words, what there is must yet become. His choice of material constitutes his personal “Atlas of Ontology”, a definition I created following Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas of the1920s dedicated to the Art of the European Renaissance – which, incidentally, also consists of sixty-three collage panels – but also in contrast to it. The term “atlas”, on the one hand, reflects the method of assembling such source material, which is the same for Kozlov and Warburg. Christopher D. Johnson describes Warburg’s panels as “…black and white photographs of art-historical and cosmographical images. Here and there he also included photographs of maps, manuscript pages, and contemporary images drawn from newspapers and magazines”. He comes to the conclusion that “Warburg’s combinatory experiments in the Atlas follow his own metonymic, intuitive logic”. (Website of the Warburg Institute, https://live-warburglibrarycornelledu.pantheonsite.io/about). Combinatory experiments following intuitive logic is exactly what Kozlov’s tables are, only that his intuitive logic is not just metonymic, that is, based on a meaning or concept, but to no less degree based on aesthetics or expression. The opposition Mnemosyne – ontology, or memory – being, on the other hand, reflects the use of this very source material, which is different for Kozlov and Warburg. Warburg uses an artefact or the image thereof as a link to the past, while Evgenij Kozlov uses it as a link to the future, because what has been achieved – what there is – immediately holds a new potential of becoming something else. In this way, Kozlov permanently enlarges his “Atlas of ontology” with each work he creates: the diptych based on the images of panel 15 becomes the “source material” for the double portrait The Heart isn’t Necessarily Red. I will return to these considerations in an article on Kozlov’s contact sheets from the 1980s, which constitute another essential component of his “Atlas of Ontology”. Hannelore Fobo, 21 December 2020. |
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| Uploaded 21 December 2020 Last updated 6 January 2021 |
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home // E-E // biographie // art // eros // Leningrad 80s // Valentin Kozlov // 2 x 3m // events // lageplan // kontakt /
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![Panel 19, detail with text: Эффекты на коже / [light] effects on the skin](E-E-19-collage-Peterhof-Berlin-faces.jpg)
![(E-E) EVGENIJ KOZLOV • E-E Drafts – Panel 20, detail with text: продолжение размера и женских фигур с постепенным обнажением / continuation of size and female figures with gradual exposure [of bones and muscles]](E-E-20-collage-Peterhof-Berlin-shoulder.jpg)
