E - E

The Leningrad 80es in the work of Evgenij Kozlov

AR series

"Timur on Horseback "


Timur zu Pferd (deutsch) >>

русский текст >>

The complete AR series: 33 photographies and 12 related works >>





In the spring of 1985 the "New Composers" Valery Alakhov and Igor Verichev, and the "New Artists" Evgenij Kozlov and Timur Novikov met at the home of the young Dutchman Johann, who had come to Leningrad for a certain period of time and rented a small appartment.

AR71
Coloured photograph mounted on a card, 20,2 x 14,5 cm, 1985. The picture shows Igor Verichev


Stimulated by food, wine and good company, they picked up felt-pens and started drawing on Johann’s collection of Soviet propaganda posters.


AR41
Timur Novikov


Like many foreigners, Johann had developed a taste for these exotic items, while the locals usually tried to ignore the huge amount of this mass production with its old-fashioned design and pathetic stereotype slogans (Peace For People).
When Evgenij Kozlov took out his camera and started shooting, their joint artistic creation turned into a spontaneous happening, and the small, conventionally furnished room, into its stage.

AR65
Johann, Timur Novikov, Igor Verichev

With a skimmer as stick, a pot as helmet, a lid as shield, they created postures resembling in their playful and elegant fights very much scenes from a joust of knights, but then, of course, the were carried along by the war cry of the „New Artists“: E-E. And this „E-E“, which along with „ASSA“ stands for a whole epoch, just means “we are aggressive, but not destructive. Our aggression is the natural creative aggressiveness of artists, it denies the old and creates the NEW. It is fun, it is bold and it is real.“

AR44
to the painted photgraphy
to painting
Timur Novikov, Igor Verichev, Johann


It is interesting to look at the propaganda posters from this point of view. Where the party slogans convey the idea of a country in constant need of self-assertion („Edinnaya Volya Narodov - MIR“), the physical and spiritual presence of the artists, provoked and caught by Evgenij Kozlov’s camera, is a clear indication of their mental independence.

AR42
Timur Novikov.

to the painting /catalogue-cover "Timur na Kone" (Timur on Horseback)


When developing the film, carefully scratching with a scalpel or pencil into the still moist emulsion of the negative, Evgenij Kozlov metamorphosed this strength. With the new features he enlarges the sphere of communication of each individual artist, visualizing what he felt to be their spiritual counterpart.




Evgenj Kozlov used a considerable part of the 33 photos of this series for graphic works and large paintings, such as „Terror to the Ennemies“, "When you start feeling your muscles" and "Timur on Horseback". The latter became the catalogue cover of the first important international exhibition of „The New Artists“ in Stockholm, in 1988.

Igor Verichev

to the painted photograph

to the painting "When you start feeling your muscles"



Text: Hannelore Fobo

First published in Na Dne 16/2001, St. Petersburg

Igor Verichev, Timur Novikov

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