It seems cruel to objects, shapes and space. He twisted them, compresses, almost no breaks. Crackling skin and bones in his portraits. Hardly able to stand it "riser", as if half-crushed a monstrous force. People are attracted and cling to each other, sought support each other in the face of failure and emptiness of life in the midst of tottering walls, littered vacant lots, corridors underworld types ( "In the wasteland," "corridor," "Father and Son"). They have something hope, although we are not yet clear on what. Excellent graphics list "lonely crowd" rather confirms the fact that these accidents are not able to get rid of his loneliness, of his inferiority and tortured, though they clung to each other.
What, though, the more cynical one from Eastern Europe, as if they were in the West little? Does he not to mock the victims of the era, and is not it time for us to protest, as Christians protested against the blasphemous "Virgin" by Max Ernst, and humanists - against the "Night Porter" Liliana Cavani?
Maxim Kantor speech always goes on casualties and injuries. Large - more than two meters high - painted relief "married couple" - this is like two bloody deformed shells of people remaining after the processing of some terrible machine, borrowed from Franz Kafka. "The extent of his rights are measured by volume loss" - the artist wrote in his essay "Fragments of existence." This is even part of the idea of his literary and philosophical texts. He - man of his word to the same extent as the person's eyes, that is, the philosopher and the artist simultaneously.
Address of his philosophy is easily recognizable. The value of rights (the "scale") is determined by the ruins and the remains, which mark the existence of each of us. The existence of empties, but that devastation is the main wealth. Karl Jaspers wrote half a century ago that the outcome of every life - the inevitable defeat, das Scheitern. How this be? Modern mass culture and elitist postmodern advised: mock and demystify. Create a "merry apocalypse" (as one critic wrote) and "fun dosmerti" (as stated in another). But it is not satisfied with Maxim Kantor in any way.
He does not always tragically serious. He - by a series of still lifes, in which he, in his own statement, refuted the idea of certainty and stability materiality of the object - a thought which is peculiar to the classical still-life (eg, Dutch). What is the object, object? Thickening Does this matter - or vice versa, and tear a hole in existence, through which peeps emptiness, nothing? Both options mockingly offered to our gaze. Again, this is about loss, of loss, of defeat - but it turns out, and amusing, and aesthetically refined. The artist knows how to play concepts and be witty.
What it does not suit, it is a farce on the edge of the precipice, a farce of errors and misfortunes, that is the very thing that's most interesting contemporary art. Monumental OpenCards "Maxim Kantor reminds me of those" archives retired lives, which makes the French artist Christian Boltanski. Faced with the possibility of coming emptiness, armed with their losses and defeats people - almost turned into a ruin, in the shadow - emits some inexplicable consciousness of their spirituality. In this artist from Russia agrees to Rembrandt, the creator of amazing portraits of old men and women, and with Pascal, who spoke about the "thinking reed" ...
On site
http://www.artinfo.ru/artbank/script...?author_id=544