The Russian Academy Of Arts

The Russian Academy of Arts presents a solo show of works by the Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Arts, sculptor Philip Rukavishnikov. The Draught from the Past exhibition features pictures of Svansong: two graphic cycles, one of which “St. Amber” is mixed media on paper, the other “Metaphysical Bestiariy” - pen on paper. On display are also acryl paintings including triptych DADA-Delalande-Multiversum and portraits of Baryshnikov, Pelevin and Pol-Pot.

The show reveals one more side of the talent of Philip Rukavishnikov, a young and already recognized master from the distinguished dynasty of artists. His great grandfather Mitrophan Rukavishnikov known for his historical portraits and decorative compositions received a diploma of the Academy of Arts in Rome. The distinctive work of the renowned sculptors – his grandfather Iulian Rukavishnikov, an author of many monuments and easel compositions, as well as his father Alexander Rukavishnikov, a brilliant sculptor-monumentalist has much influenced his formation as an artist. He adopted their perfect professional skills and impeccable art taste. The works of the young sculptor are in private collections in Russia and other countries.

Philip Rukavishnikov was born in Moscow in 1974. In 1966 he graduated from V. Surikov Moscow State Academy Art Institute where he studied under the noted sculptor O.K. Komov. The artist has obtained his individual style rather early. As diploma work he sculptured in association with his father a bronze monument to Vladimir Nabokov installed in Montre, Switzerland where the novelist had spent his last years and was buried.

Philip Rukavishnikov is not only an admirer of the unique talent of the writer, but also a connoisseur of his literary legacy. Nabokov’s books read by the young sculptor both in Russian and English have made a big impression on him and are still a powerful source of inspiration. And this exhibition is a proof of it, though one can also sense that the artist is close to some modern and avant-garde literary and artistic trends of the early 20th century which cause flows of reflections, reminiscences that result in his complicated and intricate associations. Philip Rukavishnikov demonstrates his brilliant mastery of the drawing and its various techniques. The subtle color range emphasizes unexpected juxtapositions of artistic images supplementing each other and maintaining their endless dialogue.

According to Philip Rukavishnikov, Svansong is one more Incarnation of Dadaism. The Draught from the Past is Transparent Things. That was the name of a paper by the French philosopher Pierre Delalande who investigated peculiarities of the behavior, interactions and virtues of different layers of time sometimes even epoch-making. Svansong’s pictures pursue a simple idea of transparency as a duplicated attraction something of the sort of anonymous know-how – in his adolescence he appreciated the “Moses and Burning Blackthorn” canvas by Fuchs as well as was fond of the “Sorrento Photographs” poem by Vladislav Khodasevich. As for the movies, more or less constantly shown by unknown operators in show-booths of his maturity, Svansong persistently recommended to consider his works, at least, the entire St. Amber cycle as posters for the above films. Technically, they look like portraits with double expositions and subconsciously are travesties of artifacts of some immemorial cults – among working titles of the cycle were Cards Without Shirts, Non-Transportable Banners, Heraldic Paper of the Walls of the Crystal Palace and Yesterday’s Newspapers of Pillars of Salt.

No matter how everything was going in the time of Svansong, whose father was an almost broken financier, cousin – a poet-hipster, sister – a dancer, for me the past is modernism. This past is a part of both my ego and the whole mankind. It appeared as a black snow on the cabbage head of a seller of balloons of escapism, and obliging ruins of its aftertaste – proscenium in the semidarkness – are an abyss of the poetry of decadence, a broken reactor – feed-rack for toy ungulates of artificial wool. Whose asterisk is better?

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