SERGEY
SOKOLOV
Sergey was born in 1952 in the town of Ananyev in the Odessa
region (nowadays Ukraine). In 1975, he graduated from the
Moscow Aviation Institute as an engineer but decided to
become an artist. While working at the State
Tretyakov Gallery and in the VDNKh
exhibit center, he was learning art from prominent Soviet
non-conformist masters of the 1960s generation, such
as Anatoly
Zverev (1931-1986), Marlen Shpindler (1931-2003) and
Igor Vulokh (b.1938). Later he worked as an art critic with
several Moscow galleries.
In 1989, Sergey joined the painting section of the UNESCO
International Artists Federation. He became member of the
Moscow Union of Artists in 2000.
From 1988, Sergey has regularly exhibited his works. Most
notably, he participated in the exhibits National Traditions
and Postmodernism in the State
Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow in 1993, Abstract
Art in Russia: The Twentieth Century in the State
Russian Museum in St. Petersburg in 2001 and Moscow
Abstraction: Second Half of the 20th Century in
the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow in 2003, Collage
in Russia: the 20th Century in the State Russian
Museum in St. Petersburg in 2005. He also participated in
the international project Sewers
of the World, Unite!
His works are held in the State
Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, the Moscow
Museum of Modern Art, as well as in private collections
in Russia, USA, Germany, Italy, Canada, Spain, Switzerland
and other countries.
THE WORLD OF SERGEY SOKOLOV’S IMAGERY
by Victoria Khan-Magomedova of the National Center for
Cotemporary Arts, Moscow, Russia
The art of Sergey Sokolov is more of an experience and
experiment than verification and actualization. A ritualistic
and mysterial character of his works gives them a particular
quality – a temporary continuity. Undoubtedly, Sokolov is
an artist of evening and night. A somber solemnity is heard
in the tragic pallet of purplish and brownish hues intensified
by the deep black. All the elements are elegant, commensurate,
and beautiful. Everything in them is calculated; nothing
is approximate. Some of them are reminiscent of subtle exercises
in style. There is a duality in everything. Sometimes the
artist seems to create a world founded on the laws of logic
and reason; sometimes this world abruptly explodes and chaos
and disorder prevail as if the artist wanted the beholder
to realize that the world is neither good nor bad and nothing
can be changed.
If order and rational foundations has brought our civilization
to the brink of catastrophe then the time has come for disorder
to organize chaos. But even that turns out to be an illusion.
Strange physical transformations, transfusions, evaporations,
leaks, emanations, disappearances, changes and growth seem
to take place in Sokolov’s works as if some energy was being
released from within the canvases creating space and “breathing.”
This is art sensitive to the modulations of the inner and
outer atmosphere. This is a “living” organism whose diverse
components, integrated into the pictorial substance, create
a material texture, which is corroded and subjected to erosion
and transformed into spiritual symbols. Someone seems to
be breathing under this “skin” trying to penetrate and comprehend
in a new way the initial indissoluble bond between art and
being. The light filtering in from behind the “looking glass”
of the canvas helps to establish a mystical link between
Sokolov’s works and the environment.
The artist continues to develop the theme of the window
stumbling upon new interpretations and modifications of
this complex and polysemantic notion. If in Ivan Chuikov’s
works the window frame is quite real and invites you to
enter the illusion, Sokolov’s frame is illusory; sometimes
it is denoted, other times it is implied. His “windows”
do not hint at what happens in some enclosed space or outside.
This enigmatic, spatial-temporal, plastic art notion of
window-wall-door leads to the past, or the future, or inside
itself, or to a different reality, a different dimension.
Nonetheless Sokolov’s works are neither esthetically appealing,
painterly abstract compositions built on impeccable and
refined gradations of color, nor conceptual “effusions.”
Whatever the artist creates – paintings, objects, collages
– his works speak essentially of the quest for a new identity;
of the renewal of painting by the strengthening of the notion
of the sublimated, effectuated with complete freedom and
independence; of the revision of traditions based on references
to collective memory.
Sokolov’s paintings/objects are manifestations of a sharp
mind, a high plastic art culture, a peculiar vision of the
artist who has not only meticulously studied the discoveries
of the international avant-garde but has also been able
to reexamine the modernist heritage in an original and creative
manner and to find his own way of renewal of artistic language
which opens new prospects in contemporary art.
Translated from the Russian by Victor Potoskuev.
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