Yuri Zlotnikov

Alexander Panov

Gallery "On Solyanka" Moscow

The day before the opening of the large retrospective exhibition, Yuri Savelyevich Zlotnikov turned 70 years old. But the hero of the day accepted congratulations without any enthusiasm - it seems, not because of human fear associated with advanced age, but because of artistic fear. Zlotnikov does not want to be a veteran of the arts, even the avant-garde art of nonconformists. Not only does he still exhibit himself, but he also exhibits for others, curating exhibitions with museum-like ambitions, such as the USSR Museum Project. He invites artists of different generations and views to participate in them, and somehow finds a common language with everyone. Zlotnikov even often participated in home gatherings and seminars of the “young, unfamiliar tribe” with the “iconoclast” Avdey Ter-Oganyan, discussing as equals (and sometimes in solidarity) with some left radical Osmolovsky. Zlotnikov visits “current” galleries, writes for the “Art Magazine”, which means he keeps his finger on the pulse of the times.

And that's how he always was. “Poshekhonia”, “Oblomovism”, “contemplation” are Yuri Savelyevich’s favorite curse words addressed to relaxed colleagues and the entire Russian culture, which, it seems to him, lacks mobility, intellectual rigor, and structure. Yuri Savelyevich himself is a poet of structures and a supporter of rationality. His abstract paintings and graphics (Zlotnikov is one of the pioneers of Russian post-war abstraction) are more likely scientific experiments that grew out of a passion for cybernetics, psychology and philosophy than autistic “art for art’s sake.” Created in the late 50s, “signal painting” (in fact, only graphic sketches for it; in the photo, a work from 1958) explored and organized possible spectator reactions to strange combinations of images of primary elements floating in the void - a point, a curve, a rectangle, as if flying out from tables of a crazy ophthalmologist. Most importantly, the speculative experiments of the socially active Zlotnikov, in accordance with the euphoric mood of the “thaw”, had a practical meaning: the artist’s discoveries were experimentally tested in the electrophysiological laboratory of the medical institute, and then used in the design of schools, factories and even a spaceship.

But “there was no desire to decorate the Soviet empire,” as the author himself says. Socially useful “signals” directly addressed to the viewer were replaced by complicated and abstract “sign systems” - series where talkative paintings covered with colorful infantile handwriting coexist with the enlightened silence of absolutely blank canvases (as in the recent series “Problems of Language”). However, here too there is a rigid internal logic of juxtaposition of seemingly illogical icons, only camouflaged by naive expression.

After all, Zlotnikov is a modern rationalist artist, analyst and researcher (even when he turns, whether in texts or in the titles of his works, to pathetic metaphysics). A man-research institute that does not fail. And therefore we can safely say: “Happy 70th birthday, dear Yuri Savelyevich!”