Svetlana & Igor Kopystiansky

The Christine Burgin Gallery is pleased to announce the opening on May 16 of "The Day Before Tomorrow," an installation of a new work by Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky. "The Day Before Tomorrow," is a two screen slide projection in which the everyday drama of a New York street scene is simultaneously recorded by the artists as they stand several feet apart on the same side of the street, capturing images as they choose. The resulting two rolls of film, a series of 36 photographs each, are then projected side by side.

From 1978 to 1988 the Kopystianskys worked as unofficial dissident artists in Moscow. In 1988 they immigrated to the United States. Consciously rejecting the state sanctioned style of Socialist Realism when they first began to make work in the 70s; they rejected as well the predominant dissident artforms derived from and dependent on this style. The Kopystianskys looked instead to the art of the Russian Avant Garde from the early 20th century for their influences. Important to them are the works and ideology of such artists as Tatlin and Malevich, the filmakers Eisentein and Vertov, the theater director Mayercholdt and the poet Khlebnikov. The early 20th Century is of particular interest to the Kopystianskys for being a moment in Russian cultural when the Russian cultural community was a part of an international dialogue. This ended abruptly and violently in the early 1930s with the ascendancy of Stalin.

While the Kopystianskys' work from the 70s developed as a response to their particular position as dissident artists, their methods of working remain in many important ways the same today. Their work continues to address the nature and usefulness of art within a given governing political system and to explore the ability of the artist to transform life into art. "The Day Before Tomorrow" is an important example of the way in which the Kopystianskys are able to turn the everyday occurrences into something significant and of absolute value by nothing other than their gaze. In an earlier example "An Underground Play" (1978), the Kopystianskys' illegally documented the comings and goings of a Moscow subway station, allowing us briefs glimpses of ordinary Russians as they push down escalators and hurry through walkways to catch unseen trains. As the title suggests, this work is constructed to reveal both the inherent theatricality of these images and the forbidden nature at this moment in Moscow of such a photographic project. In "Incidents II"(1996 to 2002) the Kopystianskys follow discarded objects and various bits of rubbish with their camera as they are blown about by the wind. Bags, rolling bottles, a glove, all take on a new poetic identity as disenfranchised objects. Another interesting aspect of the Kopystianskys' work is their unique attitude towards collaboration. Throughout their careers, the Kopystianskys have created and continue to create work both together and as individuals. "The Day Before Tomorrow " makes clear the nature of this unique approach, the work itself a succinct metaphor for the way in which the artists work together while maintaining their separate creative identities.

In conjunction with this exhibition, Svetlana Kopystiansky will realize a performance entitled "A Play In Two Acts" on May 16 and 17 in the Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library. Volunteers and friends of the artist will be asked to participate as actors. During the performance, the actors will be asked to act as if they are normal visitors to the reading room. There will be nothing in the library to inform visitors about the performance and only those people who will have received information about the performance from another source such as the gallery website or invitation, will know that during those two days the reading room will be the site of a performance. Visitors to the Main Reading Room will thus be divided into two groups: those who are not aware that they are participating in a performance and those who are aware. Those who are aware will try to make an effort to distinguish actors from non-actors and in doing so will become themselves participants in the performance. Two different spaces will merge in fact: a space of fiction and a space of reality. While all actions are visible, differences of consciousness are invisible. Each simple gesture, like opening a book, can be seen as a meaningful theatrical action or just as an everyday gesture not worthy of notice. The question will always remain: "What have we actually seen?"

The Kopystianskys' have jointly participated in many international exhibitions including the Venice Bienalle Aperto (1988), Sydney Biennial (1992), San Paolo Biennial (1994), Istanbul Biennial 1995, 2nd Johannesburg Biennial 1997, Lyon Biennial 1997, First British Biennial of Contemporary Art in Liverpool, 1999, Sculpture Project Munster (1997) and Documenta 11 (2002). Solo exhibitions of Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky have taken place at the Kunsthalle Dusseldorf (1994), Kunsthalle Helsinki, Finland (1994) The Art Institute of Chicago (1996), the Kunstmuseum Dusseldorf (2000), and the Sprengel Museum Hannover, Germany (2002.

Pressetext

Svetlana & Igor Kopystiansky - The Day Before Tomorrow 2003