Ivan Chuikov

Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner

Matthew Cullerne Bown, Contemporary Russian Art, New York: Phaidon Press Limited, 1989, p. 104
Gerard Durozoi, ed., Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art, Hazan,  Paris, 1993, p. 127
Renee Baigell and Matthew Baigell, "Ivan Chuikov" in Soviet Dissident Artist: Interviews after Perestroika, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 1995, pp. 171-178
N. Semenova, ed., Russian Art Encyclopedia, Trilistnik, Moscow, 2001, p. 556
Albert Schug, ed., Contemporary Art, Naumann & Gobel, Cologne, p. 322

Mixed media on board. There is light surface dirt and a couple minor flakes of paint loss, including some loss of pigment to the outer edges, and the paint layer is beginning to lift along the bottom edge. There is a 1in. vertical scrape to the upper right of the composition. Sold unframed.
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A major figure in the nonconformist movement during and after the 1960s, Ivan Chuikov has remained one of the most technically daring Russian artists. Continually exploring the different ways a pictorial surface can be manipulated to show itself as a flat surface, as a window into space, or simply as a repository for pigment, he seems to revel in the presentation of spatial ambiguities as well as dislocations of time sequences. As in the present lot, the viewer is confronted by an impassable line of trees, but a small postcard-size rectangle cut right into its middle shows a building in the Kremlin in Moscow and its surrounding gardens from a great distance. Clearly, the line of trees is on the building's grounds. The viewer, as if taking a slow walk around the building, sees close-up and distant views of the trees and the house juxtaposed simultaneously. In a manner akin to cinematic time sequences, the viewer sees either a flash-back or a flash-forward at the same time.

Chuikov's initial forays into disorienting the viewer's sense of time and space began in the 1960s with his Windows series, in which he painted over simulated windows, "thus creating a tension between the perception of the window as an object and the illusion of space created by the image painted on top of it." As Chuikov pointed out, he is occupied with "relationships between sign systems on the one hand, and reality on the other—reality in its factual, material, tangible substance (window frames, geometric volumes, room corners, etc.). And furthermore, interrelationships between different sign systems on the lowest elementary level of gesture, brushstroke, surface texture (fragments)."