Vladimir Sitnikov is carrying on the dialogue with objects: his new works are performed with the help of ordinary conservation covers with tiny portraits painted thereon.
In January 2002 in the Krokin Galery Sitnikov exhibited his new project "Telephone": those were small colourful etchings imprinted from original "plates" - used telephone cards. As it has been agreed long ago in terms of contemporary art that arts may originate from any fragments of commonness (changing the "context" is enough), no sensational manifesto derives from "The Covers" and "The telephones" by Sitnikov. But the thing is that Sitnikov is genuinely concerned with constructing a world of his own of small insignificant objects circulating from the consumer to scrap and backwards. "Snatching out, saving certain patterns-images is possible only by means of the art which has engineered its own methods and technologies in the run of history", - says Sitnikov and quotes Hamlet who experienced equal desperate disgust for "natural" cause of events. However, Hamlet being horrified that "Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay:Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw", by no means intended to save the skull of jester Yorick. Withdrawing minor things (they may be defined as "signs") from the ordinary circulation (Sitnikov calls this process "antirecycling"), the author of "The Covers" in fact introduces them into another circle, where no objects are consumed and utilized but ideas and images. It should be pointed out that the author does not "create" images: the portraits on the covers are either fragments of celebrated art works or the portraits of their creators - from Rembrandt to Malevich and from Van Gogh to Rodchenko (one may amuse himself trying to guess the persons on the covers; some contemporaries are also among them - for example, a well-known European curator; fortunately it is devoid of politicians). However, Sitnikov does not offer exact "copies" of the celebrated portraits but "theme and variations" painted in more or less one style (for instance, in the "confiture" jar one will find ordinary jam): he displays to the spectators their own narrow-minded idea about art. It is Van Gogh but the Van Gogh as Andy Warhol, or an unknown inventor of graffiti, saw him; the Van Gogh minced through the meat grinder of comics stylistics and served with acid acrylic paints, the Van Gogh that is a twin of Varvara Stepanova. It is curious that the painting techniques of portraits by Sitnikov suggesting a thick stroke of a paint-brush turns out to be quite "comics-like": Sitnikov uses a soft-tin pen. That is why these pictures are presumably everlasting and protected against the coarse reality as well as the brands of jam and baby's nourishment manufacturers hidden under them. It is common knowledge that Zdanevich's portrait can hardly be estimated as the victory of art over the producing (yet they established production of sweets with the world painting masterpieces thereon, they say it is tasty).

But the choice of a tin cover to be "saved" from the "ordinary", manufacture world of objects (that is the choice of the form for "conservating" artistic objects-portraits) is deliberate. A tiny round portrait (occasionally quite different from the original) was a traditional memorable sign (or an award - like a round ancient medal with a hero's picture). A tiny but not less round cover - is the most appropriate memorable sign for the epoch of endless reproducing.

Darya Akimova

Opening reception: October, 16 at 6 p.m.