ART CITIES:Athens- Anatoly Shuravlev
Starting from his early photographic works, Anatoly Shuravlev has always investigated aspects of mass communication and the problems related to the representation and perception of things. His career began in the milieu of the Moscow Conceptualism and lead him to exploring the connections between different cultures, frequently also in reflecting the conditions of perception in the mediatized space. Apart from works with photographs and installations he also creates paintings and objects.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Museum Alex Mylona Archive
Anatoly Shuravlev was strongly influenced in the ‘80s when focusing on the circle of the Moscow conceptualists. In his own conceptual works, he addresses issues of representation, politics of imagery and the perception of the photographic and digital image. Anatoly Shuravlev in “Future Revisited” his new project at Museum Alex Mylona – Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens, argues on the subject of the form as a primary component of art. Also on presentation are 35 original works from the George Costakis Collection by: Kazimir Malevich, Ivan Kliun, Liubov’ Popova, Mikhail Matiushin, Solomon Nikritin and others. Anatoly Shuravlev uses 1000 images of Russian avant-garde artworks from the George Costakis Collection by altering their scale and by photographically reproducing them in size 10 x 8 mm. In this way, he calls us to revisit the issue of form with the help of a new alphabet invented by the deconstruction of the formalistic art itself. Forms are again suspended in a new world and can be studied as if they were letters of a different alphabet or signs for an imaginary system. Shuravlev revives the value of these works by creating a new space, which calls for the experience of a future world-view of the Art. A whole collection of paintings and drawings becomes one single artwork, which acts as a tribute to the historical Avant-Garde but also as an invitation to see the historical avant-garde projected in a totally new way. George Costakis was born in 1912 in Moscow to Greek parents. In his early 20’s, he began collecting Russian silver, porcelain and 16th and 17th Century Dutch paintings while working in the Greek Embassy. His interest in Russian Modernism, a style that was scorned by Stalinist proponents of Socialist Realism, began in 1946, when he was shown a painting by Olga Rozanova. George Costakis then embarked on a 30-year quest to acquire and preserve Abstract, Constructivist, Cubist and Supremacist works that had been relegated to obscurity. He tracked down several artists, including Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova, and scoured the country in what he once called his private archeological excavation of avant-garde art. After burglaries and a fire at his Moscow apartment and country dacha, Costakis decided to leave the Soviet Union. After he gave 80 percent of his paintings to the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow in 1977, Soviet authorities permitted him to take about 1,200 artworks out of the country the next year, when he and his family moved to Greece. In1981 a selection of 275 works from his Collection was presented at Guggenheim Museum in New York called ”Art of the Avant-Garde in Russia: Selections from the George Costakis Collection”.
Info: Curator: Maria Tsantsanoglou, Museum Alex Mylona – Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art, 5 Agion Asomaton Square, Thisio, Athens, Duration: 5-23/4/19, Days & Hours: Wed & Fri-Sat 11:00-19:00, Thu 13:00-21:00, Sun 11:00-16:00, http://mouseioalexmylona.blogspot.gr
