Simplicity is not the art’s end purpose.
But one achieves simplicity by reaching the essence of things.

K. Brynkushy

A sculptor strives to get into the sense of human’s problems by penetrating the nature of the eternal moral issues. With the help of expressive means creates one a series of generalized images – and by these very means a person looks into the inner life of a subject, feeling the spirit hiding in the seemingly dead material. In this way the sculptures produce an image of something organic, naturally grown due to the pressure coming from inside, they are capable of living an independent life and attaining some special significance.

Aleksey Vladimirov is an artist with an ancient soul. As a sculptor, he seems to have come from the matriarchy epoch. He works refining his masterpieces into a sacred stone, an old natural unmovable object. I will not be mistaken if I presume that Vladimirov’s sculptures are the right place for religious officiating, initiations and sacrifices. Maestro is in possession of the incredible feeling of archaic, and it is this feeling that tells him which form and subject to chose. Aleksey Vladimirov seems to be living in constant analyzing of the oldest neolith styles and methods, getting the inspiration from them every time.

From the author’s point of view, the outer unity is not the only characteristics of a work. It should possess the spontaneous intimacy, or even soft and tender attitude for the detail, when the stipple of stone is carefully revealed in harmony with svelte forms transiting into each other. They are skillfully emphasized with the separately sharpened sides and the linear precision of silhouette. The sculpture demonstrates the energy of growing, the building up of the form, the mutual influence and transition of the plans. The same movement enlivens the highlighted spots of the stone, evoking associations with the warm wind blowing or a human breathing. The tenderly revealed measured nobleness of the material also becomes a metaphor of an image of a human being. The slightly coldish golden color of bronze is breathtakingly beautiful, and the calm, softened, stylish sculpture equally distributes the light. This called upon inner and outer light is keen on the cognizing of the form in its spatial essence. The form is in the awaiting of being frozen in the ideal state of eidos, ball or sphere. The smooth shine gliding on the spherical upward and downward surfaces recalls the feeling of the image’s ideal wholeness and the truly cosmic grandeur.

The complex logic of Vladimirov’s works, the specific rhythmic of his sculptures are determined by the artistic energy and passion for discovering new plastic worlds, revealing the logos of architectonics, searching for effects of tension and suddenness within a mass of stone. It is where the unity, sequence, rhythm and logic, ponderability of his masterpieces come from. The whole sculpture is easy to catch in one glimpse, like it was in the prehistoric times. The silhouette becomes cognizable, the same as the visual portraying of the monolith’s inner structure. As a result, two areas come together as one – the inner and outer spaces. It is how the axe tension of a sculpture is created, the latter being splendid and persuasively votive.

Like Henry Moore’s, Aleksey Vladimirov’s works state the enormous power of sphere, its eternal capability for renewal and flowering within a framework of sculpture. The same as Henry Moore he tries to bring distant and incompatible style epochs together – into one ‘organic unity’. He is obsessed with passionate love to Hellenistic motives in the Italian art and rough sacral weightiness epitomizing the cradle of civilization: the Neolithic art, Mexico and Africa.

A human figure, the shining and tender beauty of the divine body is always covered with a sort of saving essential wrapping. Such wrappings are seen on the figures on the holly icons. The tiny soul of the Virgin Mary is carefully wrapped in the shining linens on the canonic portraying of the Assumption. The long white body of the Savior is wrapped in the same cloth on the Entombment and Do Not Lament Me, O Mother. Lazarus, raised from the dead came out of the dungeon wearing dazzlingly white clothes in order to greet Messiah … The start of a new life (babies on ‘The Nativities’) and its logical end are marked with this wrapping and white shining of the splendid gear. It is the token of all meetings and farewells in this world. We use these linens to protect our warm human bodies, coming out of them and, as we grow older we need them anew to cover ourselves. Wrappings, rizas may be excised or hacked with an imagined sword, thus producing the effect of wrinkles on drapery, which bear resemblance to the schematic depicting of clothes on the Byzantine icons.

These wounds and dramas seem to be deliberately inflicted on live human flesh by the cruel outer world. Here the plastic accents on the conflicting poles are being focused on to the utmost extent. The rough stone suffering from wounds and scars, its mysterious cocoon, its wrappings provide a shelter for the sacred warmth, body, child, woman and muse. And it all makes me think of a birth.

Vladimirov epitomizes a perfect body in the dramatic unity of distances and disruptions. He and She are tied to each other be as one with bonds seeable in all their essential visibility. (The Song of Songs 8:6). The artist is obsessed with anxious speculations about the nature of love. Eros the Almighty is invisibly present in every sculpture of his, being weak and tender or ferocious and passionate at turns. The Eros of Aleksey Vladimirov is a vigilant creator of beauty. And his power is impossible to surpass.

The artist is trying to strike the fire of beauty – in this he resembles the master in the Apollo’s Temple. Nevertheless, Vladimirov’s beauty is soft and tender, shining with some inner light, deliberately opposing the tragic, embodied in the eternal severe but yet fascinating images of the Iliad – the glowing grounds of human life, fateful engine of every becoming.

The true and prophetic striving to harmony is reflected in skilful and patient working on creation of another light and beauty – they are not burning to death but full of deep belief in human. This work is carried out somewhere ‘far from the maddening crowd’, in a carefully hidden place. Not fear, but Love, its new Beauty, more dazzling, far more tender is being born in front of our eyes.

But in the artist’s studio the new boulders stand in awaiting – colorful and happy, they come from the unknown faraway lands. These are yellow amazonite from India and the marble onyx. Still, there is another one, some specialty, with purple streams around its kernel running through the sacred vertical of human figure like a cool flow of spirit. ‘Somewhere in the depths of these stones the gods are sleeping’, said Michelangelo. I realize to the full how happy and satisfied the artist must be having completed his intuition, belief, his Love in a sterling polished form.

Dmitriy Korsun’, the artist

November the 9th, 2008