Dnipropetrovsk. Ya Gallery Art Center

Goldman

27.09.2013 – 02.11.2013

As part of exploring unprofessional art of the "new naive" Ya Gallery presents Arkadiy Goldman's first personal project, that reveals the personality of an ordinary engineer who has been creating wooden sculptures for more than forty years. It is the first time that Ya Gallery's object of exploration is the artist himself, not his work.

Exhibition Dnipropetrovsk Ya Gallery Art Center

As part of exploring unprofessional art of the "new naive" Ya Gallery presents Arkadiy Goldman's first personal project, that reveals the personality of an ordinary engineer who has been creating wooden sculptures for more than forty years. It is the first time that Ya Gallery's object of exploration is the artist himself, not his work.

Unknown among Dnipropetrovsk professional authors, self-taught master uses art only as a means to visualize his own philosophy. And beyond art, according to Goldman himself, he is an "ordinary person", with a Soviet past behind his shoulders and modest everyday needs.

Goldman's very philosophy is based on criticism of the flaws of the modern society. From this perspective, he makes an attempt to preserve vital truths in symbolic sculptures. Immersed in the process of improving his philosophy, Goldman polished his own personality, getting rid of everything that doesn't correspond to his idea of himself as an author. Reconstruction of this image in the exposition is implemented through "connecting" the viewer to the story, photo- and video- capturing of the sculptor's living space. The image is completed with a symbolic Goldman portrait, created by Oleksandr Korol using author's material.

Contrarily to master Goldman's static image, his works illustrate the dynamics of personal philosophy that is also not subject to external influences. It seems that the whole history of art, especially contemporary art theories, have gone past the sculptor's microcosm. With the exception of three personalities from the last century - Soviet sculptors Vadim Sidur and Sergey Konenkov, and French sculptor Aristide Maillol. Sidur's laconic sculptures resonated with Goldman not only because both were born in Dnipropetrovsk, but also because Sidur's tragic life experiences made him constantly rethink the themes of social disasters. And in Konenkov's and Maillol's sculptures Goldman found approaches to work with female forms.

Beyond these influences and despite forty years of "creative experience", Goldman remains an absolutely people's author, who translates images in clear "direct speech". So the problem of artwork interpretation that contemporary artists usually leave to viewers and critics is absent in Goldman's case.

Olena Yegorushkina