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Yevgeniy
Fiks
Ayn Rand in
Illustrations (Atlas Shrugged, page
29)
2010
Watercolor, ink, and pencil on
paper
24" x 15" (61 x 38.1
cm)
Click image to view
larger.
Yevgeniy
Fiks
Ayn Rand in
Illustrations (Atlas Shrugged, page
972)
2010
Watercolor, ink, and pencil on
paper
24" x 15" (61 x 38.1
cm)
Click image to view
larger.
Yevgeniy
Fiks
Ayn Rand in
Illustrations (Atlas Shrugged, page
225)
2010
Watercolor, ink, and pencil on
paper
24" x 15" (61 x 38.1
cm)
Click image to view
larger.
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FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 25,
2010
 Yevgeniy Fiks
Ayn Rand in
Illustrations
June
18 - July 30,
2010
Opening: Friday, June 18, 2010
Winkleman Gallery is very pleased to present “Ayn Rand in
Illustrations,” our second solo exhibition by Russian-born, New York-based
artist Yevgeniy Fiks. Continuing Fiks' exploration of repressed
micro-historical narratives that highlight the complex relationships between
social histories of the West and Russia in the 20th century, “Ayn Rand in
Illustrations” presents a suite of large works on paper in watercolor,
ink, and pencil. This first exhibition from Fiks’ ongoing series examining
the uncanny resemblance between Rand’s aesthetics and that of Soviet
Socialist Realist Art presents works referencing Rand’s novel Atlas
Shrugged.
Author Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum, better known in the US as Ayn Rand, was born
in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1905. As a teenager, Rand saw the Russian
Revolution unfolding from her bedroom window on the city’s largest avenue
Nevsky Prospect. Shortly thereafter, her father’s pharmacy was
nationalized and her family’s hardships began. According to Rand, she had
rejected the Revolution from the outset and spent her teens and early twenties
in a self-imposed "internal emigration," finding escape in 19th
century romantic literature. Rand left Russia for the United States in 1926,
when the aesthetics that became later known as "Socialist Realism"
were just in the process of
formation.
For each of these drawings, Fiks and his studio combined sections of
Rand’s prose (as they appear on the page in Fiks' copy of Atlas
Shrugged, including the page number) with images of Soviet Socialist
Realist paintings and sculptures, found in art books and magazines. Each letter
of the text was rendered, as was the image of the painting or sculpture in
grisaille. In the artist’s own words, “The Capitalist
utopia of Ayn Rand and Communist utopia of Stalin become symbiotic and
interchangeable in this project. The two ideologies rely on the same
approach of representation through propaganda, idealization, romanticization,
glorification, etc. "Ayn Rand in Illustrations" exposes the mechanics
of Rand’s aesthetics and that of Socialist Realism indiscriminately.
Through the juxtaposition, Socialist Realism and Ayn Rand effectively cancel
each other: while Socialist Realist imagery become possible illustrations
for Ayn
Rand,
Socialist Realist Art appears to be only useful today as illustrations for Ayn
Rand's
writings."
Yevgeniy Fiks was born in Moscow in 1972 and has been living and working in
New York since 1994. Fiks has produced many projects on the subject of the
Post-Soviet dialog in the West, among them: “Lenin for Your
Library?” in which he mailed V.I. Lenin’s text “Imperialism:
The Highest Stage of Capitalism” to one hundred global corporations as a
donation for their corporate libraries; “Communist Party USA,” a
series of portraits of current members of Communist Party USA, painted from life
in the Party’s national headquarters in New York City; and
“Communist Guide to New York City,” a series of photographs of
buildings and public places in New York City that are connected to the history
of the American Communist movement. Fiks’ work has been shown
internationally, including solo exhibitions at Winkleman Gallery and Common Room
2, both in New York (USA); Contemporary City Foundation, Marat Guelman Gallery,
and
ARTStrelka Projects in Moscow, and the State Museum of Russian Political
History, St. Petersburg (Russia); and the Lenin-Museo, Tampere (Finland). His
work has been included in the Biennale of Sydney (2008); Thessaloniki Biennale
of Contemporary Art (2007); and Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2009, 2007
and 2005).
For more information, please contact Edward
Winkleman at 212.643.3152 or
info@winkleman.com.
Winkleman Gallery
621 West 27th Street
New York, NY
10001
t:
212.643.3152
www.winkleman.com
Reflective Reflexion, curated by Joy
Garnett
June 18-July 30, 2010
press release (to
come)
 Visit the CRL
website for updates.
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