Valeriy Gerlovin (B. 1945)/Rimma Gerlovina (B. 1951)/Mark Berghash (B. 1935)

unique large-format Polaroid Polacolor print, signed and dated in ink in the margin, framed, 1988

This Polacolor print is in generally excellent condition. The color is strikingly rich and saturated, with no apparent fading. In raking light, a very small linear crease, not breaking the emulsion, is visible near the lower edge of the image.
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Rimma Gerlovina and Valeriy Gerlovin, married artistic collaborators, were founding members of Soviet Russia's underground conceptual art movement in the 1970s.  Known as Samizdat ('self-publishing'), the group's subversive activities included conceptual and performance art, as well as poetry, prose, and the first magazine of contemporary Russian art, A-Ya.   As public exhibitions and performances of Samizdat's works were forbidden, performances and gatherings took place underground, in private homes.  A number of Gerlovina/Gerlovin's works were eventually smuggled abroad, including the important  Zoo: Homo Sapiens of 1977.  This photograph of the artists behind bars, a comment on censorship by Soviet authorities, made its way to the Eastern Europe Biennial of that year, the 'Biennial of Dissent' in Venice, where it caused a stir.  The exhibition of this work eventually led to Gerlovina's and Gerlovin's emigration to the United States in 1980.

The images offered here, from Gerlovina/Gerlovin's Photems series, were made with the 20-by-24-inch camera in Polaroid's New York studio in lower Manhattan.  Begun in 1986 in collaboration with photographer Mark Berghash, the photographs are both individual and paired close-ups of the artists with words and symbols applied to their bodies. The couple has used the term 'anthropomorphic poetry' to describe these works, in which facial expressions are combined with painted messages to convey both meaning and humor.

The duo commented on the importance of words in their photographs as follows:

'Words themselves are symbols of thoughts.  Breathing new life into old portrayals, they propel into action as "still performances."  Often, lasting impact is produced by contemplation.  Our "still performances" become the em-body-ment of our thought projections in real figures of speech.  Language conceals more than it reveals until we reduce words to their hidden meanings so that the word can be heard behind the words' (Photoglyphs, unpaginated).

Sotheby's wishes to thank Rimma Gerlovina and Valeriy Gerlovin for their contribution to this entry.