Totem

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2009

Wood, mixed media, 350 х 90 х 65 cm

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My sculpture Totem relates, on the one hand, to the modernist paradigm of art: it clearly manifests one of its fundamental principles — “the material dictates the form.” When the material is wood, the sculptural form naturally grows out of a vertical, rounded structure reminiscent of a tree trunk.

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At the same time, the work cannot be reduced solely to modernism. Its form and texture are not invented but borrowed; however, this borrowing has passed through numerous stages of transformation and distillation, and has therefore lost its direct significance. The style of the piece balances on a barely perceptible edge.

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An important aspect of the work is the attempt to create a self-contained, “closed” artwork — one that generates its own frame. This is why the central axis of symmetry is crucial: symmetry produces a sense of wholeness and completion. The sculpture exists, as it were, “outside context” and can be exhibited in any space.

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Despite its formal references to cult objects (particularly those of the indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast of America), the sculpture is not grounded in any ritual or ideological program. In this sense, one can discern a subtle intonation of simulationism.

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Anatoly Osmolovsky

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