Dmitry Gutov is one of the most emblematic and mysterious personalities of the Moscow art scene. Over the last ten years he has missed none of the international art events with Russian participation: not the 2002 Sao Paolo Biennial, nor the Berlin-Moscow exhibition in Martin-Gropius-Bau in 2003; not the Venice Biennial in 2007, nor Documenta-12; not the third Contemporary Art Biennial in Moscow in 2009, nor the exhibition which just opened its doors in the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid.
Gutov is a romantic fascinated by metaphysics and an inveterate partisan of leftist discourse. In the early nineteen-nineties, Gutov, a philosopher and art historian, founded an artistic and philosophical seminar that is still active today; at the centre of his interests figured the study of the work of the Marxist critic Mikhail Lifchitz. Lifchitz came to attention in the twenties during the flowering of the Russian avant-garde and never ceased revising Marxist teaching under Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev. Gutov consecrated a brilliant documentary to him and to the history of Russia. As an artist, theoretician Gutov works in all media: He constructs global installations in natural settings, paints, sculpts, takes photographs, shoots video, etc...
For the Taïss Gallery, Dmitry Gutov has created a special project entitled, « Notes chaotiques (Chaotic Notes)». The idea for the project came to him while he was looking at souvenir photographs he had taken during walks in the area surrounding Moscow. They showed the edges of the woods and snowy fields entirely covered by strange structures in barbed wire and metallic nets, evoking the enclosures of prisons and the post-apocalyptic mortal remains of contemporary civilization. In fact, these vestiges were nothing more than the household refuse of the inhabitants who transform their little patches of land into veritable fortresses by means of whatever aggressive materials they can put their hands on, in order to protect themselves from the potential dangers which threaten their microcosm and their macrocosm and impregnate their entire existence. Their « self-defense » provokes aggression because defense and offense are linked metaphysically. This global phenomenon is particularly evident in Russia where construction takes place very quickly but destruction to the very foundations takes place just as quickly as well. It is no coincidence that the « Internationale » song born in France resounded nowhere as strongly as in the Soviet Union in its new composition: « Nous démolirons le monde entier de la violence / jusqu'à la base puis/ nous construirons notre monde à nous, un monde nouveau, / - Celui qui n'était rien, deviendra tout » (« We destroy the entire world of violence/ down to its foundations, then/then we will build our own world, a new world/What once was nothing will be everything »)
From these photo-notes in his travel diary, Gutov sculpted objects in metal. A flat metallic frame appears to enclose a pictorial surface from which emerge mutilated hieroglyphs like signs of a world aspiring towards self development, beaten down by the energy of its self destruction. Gutov's frames bring to mind the windows of dungeons that forcefully limit living space, and decorative grilles; helping to support the young plant shoots which entwine them. In these abstract objects the artist guards a fragile balance between expression and meditation, painting and sculpture; he leaves his message incomplete, creating something we perceive at once as an artifact and as ready-made.
In the Taïss Gallery, as if on music paper, using taut steel cords Gutov reproduces the second score for three pianos by Dmitri Shostakovich, composed in 1944 during the tragic days of the Second World War. One of the composer's most celebrated works thereby acquires a spatial representation and resonates the quiet music of a world seized by the premonition of an invisible, yet present, catastrophe.
Gutov's plastic metaphors are completed by a video: a documentary recording of a blind beggar who sings in the underground passages of the Moscow metro. Next to him is an immense photo of this modern-day « Madman of God» whose songs make passersby walk more quickly.
The clearly articulated carcass of Gutov's artistic work, product of a fundamental reflection on the metaphysical, social and artistic problems that appeared at the end of the first decade of this century, channel anguish and hope at the same time.
Gutov is a romantic fascinated by metaphysics and an inveterate partisan of leftist discourse. In the early nineteen-nineties, Gutov, a philosopher and art historian, founded an artistic and philosophical seminar that is still active today; at the centre of his interests figured the study of the work of the Marxist critic Mikhail Lifchitz. Lifchitz came to attention in the twenties during the flowering of the Russian avant-garde and never ceased revising Marxist teaching under Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev. Gutov consecrated a brilliant documentary to him and to the history of Russia. As an artist, theoretician Gutov works in all media: He constructs global installations in natural settings, paints, sculpts, takes photographs, shoots video, etc...
For the Taïss Gallery, Dmitry Gutov has created a special project entitled, « Notes chaotiques (Chaotic Notes)». The idea for the project came to him while he was looking at souvenir photographs he had taken during walks in the area surrounding Moscow. They showed the edges of the woods and snowy fields entirely covered by strange structures in barbed wire and metallic nets, evoking the enclosures of prisons and the post-apocalyptic mortal remains of contemporary civilization. In fact, these vestiges were nothing more than the household refuse of the inhabitants who transform their little patches of land into veritable fortresses by means of whatever aggressive materials they can put their hands on, in order to protect themselves from the potential dangers which threaten their microcosm and their macrocosm and impregnate their entire existence. Their « self-defense » provokes aggression because defense and offense are linked metaphysically. This global phenomenon is particularly evident in Russia where construction takes place very quickly but destruction to the very foundations takes place just as quickly as well. It is no coincidence that the « Internationale » song born in France resounded nowhere as strongly as in the Soviet Union in its new composition: « Nous démolirons le monde entier de la violence / jusqu'à la base puis/ nous construirons notre monde à nous, un monde nouveau, / - Celui qui n'était rien, deviendra tout » (« We destroy the entire world of violence/ down to its foundations, then/then we will build our own world, a new world/What once was nothing will be everything »)
From these photo-notes in his travel diary, Gutov sculpted objects in metal. A flat metallic frame appears to enclose a pictorial surface from which emerge mutilated hieroglyphs like signs of a world aspiring towards self development, beaten down by the energy of its self destruction. Gutov's frames bring to mind the windows of dungeons that forcefully limit living space, and decorative grilles; helping to support the young plant shoots which entwine them. In these abstract objects the artist guards a fragile balance between expression and meditation, painting and sculpture; he leaves his message incomplete, creating something we perceive at once as an artifact and as ready-made.
In the Taïss Gallery, as if on music paper, using taut steel cords Gutov reproduces the second score for three pianos by Dmitri Shostakovich, composed in 1944 during the tragic days of the Second World War. One of the composer's most celebrated works thereby acquires a spatial representation and resonates the quiet music of a world seized by the premonition of an invisible, yet present, catastrophe.
Gutov's plastic metaphors are completed by a video: a documentary recording of a blind beggar who sings in the underground passages of the Moscow metro. Next to him is an immense photo of this modern-day « Madman of God» whose songs make passersby walk more quickly.
The clearly articulated carcass of Gutov's artistic work, product of a fundamental reflection on the metaphysical, social and artistic problems that appeared at the end of the first decade of this century, channel anguish and hope at the same time.
