By Nina Mozheiko: The artistic style of Vladimir Slobodchikov does not fit into any art history template. His sculptures are not just a form, but its sublimation. An exhibition with such title is being held at the National Art Museum these days. It is a retrospective series of plastic figures, where the main character is a woman.
Olga Arkhipova, a leading researcher at the National Art Museum of Belarus: "The female images and the female figure take an important place in the work of Vladimir Ivanovich. We do not see any anatomical details here, though. We do not see the ideal of feminine beauty. What we see is a sign – that what this image personifies. Every sculpture here is first of all sublimation of an idea into one or another static form."
Slobodchikov gives a special meaning to the material. Recently, he has shifted his creative work from monumental bronze statues to aluminum reliefs.
Vladimir Slobodchikov, a sculptor, an Honoured Artist of Belarus: "I got very interested in working with aluminum at some point. When polished, it looks like silver a little, and this effect is very decorative. It is very modern both in texture and in colour, so I'm working more now with this material – with its alloys, rather."
Instead of white walls, guest of the exhibition will see gray – the colour of wet asphalt. Iconoclasm and breaking free of the canons have always been the artistic principles of Vladimir Slobodchikov. He is an experimenter who likes his hyperboles.
