Grisha Bruskin (1945) is one of the most important russian contemporary artists. His works are found in many museums and private collections, not only in Russia. In 1999 he was invited by the German government to make the monumental triptych “Life First” for the reconstruction of the Reichstag in Berlin. In 2012 he received the Kandinsky Prize in the category “Project of the Year”.
A mysterious alphabet containing 160 characters: angels, demons with the face of animals, figures pierced by lightning, men who carry on their shoulders their shadow, or peering into the secrets of a book. For his first exhibition in Venice Grisha Bruskin chose the project “Alefbet”: five great tapestries (2,80m x 2,10) were the heart of the exhibition. The preparatory drawings of the artist, the gouaches and 6 extraordinary paintings compose different stages in which this complex and fascinating “archive of the sign” was subdivided. A dense summary commemorating a thousand-year tradition, the Jewish Talmud and the Kabbalah. A possible and permanent symbolic key to read our history and our present.
The exhibition in Venice was sponsored by the Center for the Studies on the Arts of Russia (CSAR)
of Ca ‘Foscari University, Italy, and curated by Giuseppe Barbieri and Silvia Burini in collaboration with the Fondazione Querini Stampalia. A Catalog of the Exhibition in Venice has been published by Terra Firma , with essays by Yevgeny Barabanov, Giuseppe Barbieri, Grisha Bruskin, Silvia Burini, Boris Groys, Mikhail Jampolskij.
Carlo MARINO
http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/bruskin_grisha.htm?section_name=breaking_the_ice
