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ALEXANDER SUTULOV’S PROJECTS

Description of Alexander Sutulov´s visual art projects. Alexander Sutulov
November 28 2005

                                             

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ALEXANDER SUTULOV’S PROJECTS

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  1. An artistic Project is more than a set of writings, drawings and estimations to get an approximate idea of how much a work of art will cost, just as in an engineering or architecture project, for such is the dictionary definition of the word “project”. An Art project, which is what Alexander Sutulov presents us, are a particular form of thinking, they require a community to reach their true meaning, value, and existence. This artist’s proposition goes beyond any didactic pretence, establishing an aesthetic option –the good and the beautiful- aimed at something which is about to exist, and which needs every person’s nearness to have the opportunity to become his/her possession. The latter because an idea in art does not call for the sum of knowledge’s which make it possible, but it appeals to generosity: the joy of being beyond the boundaries that might be expected from professionals and private interests. More than different publics or clients, an art project needs actors.
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  1. In the 20th century projects are not a rare thing. We even have been living obsessed with them, and we do not conceive existence without this particular form of activity, which appears to be the only form of obtaining things, whether to reach the moon or to fix a house, or certainly the logistics needed to live a married life. In lieu of thinking of administering end-reaching plans, a work of art is a project which ultimately has the mission of getting lost and live by it. It doesn’t end as it was expected. This is the main difference between a project and an art project.
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  1. From centuries back we have projects that have remained and we have turned them into real works of art. How to elude the energy in the sketch of the façade of Strasbourg Cathedral (probably by Erwin de Steinbach, ca. 1280), which shows us how matter –stone– has been dominated by spirit –form. This drawing existed to establish the starting point of a very complex and long-lasting collective effort that would affect and determine the life and endeavours of a whole community. We can imagine the first day the city saw this drawing, and how it has been beheld by many people who reinterpreted it throughout years until these lines became stone. Probably at the end that cathedral was not as it was imagined in the beginning –a drawing. But in art projects this can be a benefit: the whole, finally, is bigger than the sum of its parts, and form becomes the sign of a whole civilization. It was the work of a number of persons who believed in it, which saw a deep meaning who up until today intrigues and moves us.
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  1. Another example of what an art project is can be found in a series of buildings which were only possible in drawings, for nobody thought they might be built: there was no technology available. But these sketches meant too much in those times, in spite of their uselessness. The fact that they were projects did not mean impairment; thus, they were prized and discussed. This particular form of the French to see and understand themselves was what we call today “visionary architecture,” which was born during the dark times of the French Revolution. Maybe it was a “necessary” architecture to exorcise that time’s bloodshed, whose main figures are Bouillée and Ledoux. It was a form of peace, no matter if it was the peace of cenotaphs and mausoleums. These works opened new ways and possibilities, both technical and artistic, to architecture, which only during the present century with such an overwhelming technology as the one existing nowadays, are possible to make. Post-modern architecture nurtures itself from these works, maybe to drive away the horror of a particularly violent century.
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THE ARTISTIC PROJECT

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  1. Nowadays, a time of so much power, the artistic project, which is a potency –that’s why Sutulov works with digital technologies and classical crafts, which are the frontier of our present development– has difficulties to exist, maybe because of the atomization of languages and knowledge’s; each one wants to reduce the plan to its own enclosure without the possibility of a plasticity to go beyond the boundaries, in order to articulate itself with others: fragments prevent the whole, this is our contemporary crisis. Due to many of these problems, human capacity is unable to project itself, with the help of an all-powerful future, beyond its boundaries. Future has become a despotic exigency and it is no longer a possibility to turn the present into a rich and varied realm. Works of art only exist, on the other hand, as a chance that enlightens the present, and hence derives a great part of their richness and renewed immortality which can be seen in them in each and different human epoch: art, no matter how desolate be the reality it deals with, is a repose. What was the future when a cathedral was been built, if the completed work was going to be beheld by the next generation? Where was the efficiency of da Vinci’s projects we are proud of today, and seize as his heirs? Would we be able to recognize and encourage da Vinci if he appeared among us? Are we generous enough with the imagination of our artists, scientist and poets? What is the dignity of their talent, discipline, and effort? Contrary to what one might imagine, today it is difficult to create and, fundamentally it is not a matter of money, it is the aesthetic imagination, which makes things more difficult, almost inevitable, so to say. This is absurd if you consider how many elements there are today to make a work as the one you can see here.
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  1. Alexander Sutulov’s projects exhibited here are stubborn insistences in a possibility between association and dialog, making ground to establish a language which does not deprive those different “speeches” of their own specifications and integrities, and which does give rise to common language to talk and to think. On the other hand, these projects as meaning, appeal anyone who may have some power over decisions which determine that something can exist: authorities, financiers, and technicians. These appeals pretend that the later become articulators of the project and not distant gods.
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  1. In Sutulov’s projects we see human endeavour empowered by a plan. When a person walks he/she will not be the same if she/he has the opportunity of meeting a work of art during this daily routine. That is what these “virtual realities” seek to show us, three dimensional and plane projects: how the mere act of walking, wandering, and waiting would be if nearby existed a work of art raised by the community. Thus it seems quite reasonable that art come to meet us: it should draw our attention, and maybe a sense of space, an act of involvement, a moment of being with somebody else or alone may be different, may mean something.
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  1. Present times may be a time of crisis, of dissolution to art and meanings, but by choosing a graphic work Sutulov makes a categorical assertion:  meanings are possible if there is a community, if we build that community, if we articulate community. This is culture. And projects are here to make this opportunity possible.
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SUTULOV´S WORK IN HIS PROJECTS

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  1.  Steps are important in any project, they are responsible of its fluidity and that an idea may not be betrayed, they must count for the constant evaluation in order to improve and assure that the results meet all excellence in criteria. In an art project these steps turn into a process of modulation which is a constituting and symbolic part of the work of art. This is particularly characteristic of graphic art which began some years ago to rescue and question the elements that constitute it as an expression: its origin in a serial work, colour separation, printing procedures, stages, ghost image, sketches and plans, photography and printing proofs. Moreover, in this particular craft converge all forms which constitute the elaboration, capture or processing of the image. Today these forms are: digital procedures, electrographs, image processing software, and networks where information “travels” in form of bit maps, vectorized graphics. Considering this, which is today’s medium for a digital work? Optical discs, iris prints, computer monitors, lithographs, digital prints, virtual works? All of them are possible. And the constant is information. Information is a work of art.
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  1. Sutulov´s work starts with a search of images, something that can be a deliberate investigation or fortuitous encounter. From this point each image is valued in a series of relationships which define it: the picture that talks to us about an epoch, the lines which speak of an age, art which expresses an ideal. When these images have been selected or created, they are digitalized: filed. With this thought electronically means become forced: it is no longer a matter of what progress can do, it’s a matter of what artists require.
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  1. From this point starts a composition step, sketch creations which will be digitalized, too, in order to decompose them in four tracks of graphic information: yellow, cyan, magenta, and black. Each layer or image will be intervened and composed with others overlapping them, producing a final image. All this is possible through the artist’s intervention upon each one of them or the sum, thanks to a real cartography: maps to “understand” the water courses, image boundaries and encounters, line-paths and light position, and colour shades: landscapes to be trodden upon. Here also occur encounters, both planned and fortuitous, enhancing the work, rediscovering it.
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  1. The work completed will come back as a digital file which will be once more re-planned, reprocessed, rediscovered.
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  1. Sutulov elaborates his projects in steps that are singularized by their plasticity and diversity in the forms of expression which can reach the work. From these features derives a great part of the richness that can potentate it, depending on the print technique or medium which will make it visible. This happens because the final product is not the image: there was simultaneously a thorough and patient task of investigating the possible structures and surfaces, directly related to other fields of knowledge: engineering, printing, architecture, three-dimensional design, etc.
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  1. Anyone can think that this need of a dialog that Sutulov thinks are required for his projects might threat the integrity of a work of art. There is nothing to be afraid of, the work, that digital file is the integrity you come back to over and over again whenever there’s a doubt: you come to a work, not to a sketch; it is more powerful than a simple reference, and there lies the aesthetic integrity of the projects. This will allow them to be modulated in multiple forms, and even to travel through cyberspace: the digital format.
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  1. Finally, it is worth saying that whenever I behold the work of Alexander Sutulov I am amazed at its power, not at its strength: synonyms that in this century may have two different meanings. The power in his work is delicate enough not to force or do violence to us. Today, more than in other times, it is common to mistake art with an act of force –maybe because of the exigencies of a despotic future– a sort of intimidation which even turns against the artist himself, not because of his work, but the public relations or marketing: the nothingness. It is a sort of rest to find an artist who bets his identity in the work of art, giving himself entirely to it as its creator.
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Luis Catalán Torres

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Santiago, Chile, 1997

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 ALEXANDER SUTULOV’S PROJECTS   Description of Alexander Sutulov´s visual art projects.

Artworks Media : Digital - Giclee
Prices : 1000 To 1500 Usd



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