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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.“
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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.
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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.
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Text: Hannelore Fobo
First published in Na Dne 16/2001, St. Petersburg
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Igor Verichev, Timur Novikov
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