- 60
Leonid Sokov, b.1941
Description
- Leonid Sokov
- A group of ten kinetic sculptures comprising:Bear with a Russian Muzhik, 1996Tatlin's Tower with a Bottle, 1996Apple and Cucumber, 1996Klutis Poster, 1996Bear and Mickey, 1996Mausoleum, 1992Bear with a Birch tree, 1992Tchaikovsky, 1998Shine a Light for the Thief, not for the Procurator, 1999Malevich's Suprematism, 1999
- all signed in Latin and variously dated
- mixed media
- largest: 11.5 by 52cm, 4½ by 20½in.; smallest: 10 by 14cm., 4 by 5½in.
Catalogue Note
''Almost all these works are kinetic. A greater part of the works created between 1992 and 1996 was exhibited in Bologna, Italy in January 1996 at the Severiarte Gallery. They were exhibited again alongside all the other works from this period at the Palais de Nations in Geneva, Switzerland in June and July 1999.
The whole series of small works is inspired by motion. This is traditional folk art. With Russian kinetic toys, movement either hides or endeavours to reveal the world; it is an attempt to create artistic form with primitive means. They are amusing and to the point. For example, the revolving motion of the toy Bear and Russian Muzhik hints at the repetitiveness of many events in every person's life. Of course all the sculptures point to a modern context and to modern Russo-Soviet myths. I refer here to my short essay of 1996, the only edition of which was published to accompany the exhibition in the Severiarte Gallery: it points out precisely those motifs which guided me in the creation of these works. Above all, I was interested by, and remain interested in, the idea of the modern myth.
The toy-sculptures are themselves the result of lengthy deliberation on this topic. The evident incompleteness and partial nature is itself a calculated device. The whole history of Russia is ''unfinished''; all the ideas are incomplete, the good, the powerful and the beautiful. In Mythologies, Roland Barthes writes: ''archetypes are very difficult to alter or they are unalterable''. This interpretation is unchanged today. Every era examines archetypes and creates an exterior for each which fits them to modernity, to reality, but reality is already sufficiently mythologized...
The exhibition High and Low at the Museum of Modern Art in New York was indicative of my subject matter in this regard, illustrating every statement with an example from fine art.
On the subject of banality or kitsch Barthes shows how this banality is mythologized by advertisements, texts, films and the press, and how mythology, Greek tragedy and ancient myths permeate it.''
Leonid Sokov, New York, 2006