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From Russia with cardboard
Valery Koshlyakov, ‘Feed,’ and ‘Off the Wall’
BY RANDI HOPKINS

Russian painter and installation artist Valery Koshlyakov’s "monuments" are large-scale paintings on cardboard depicting such iconic structures as the Kremlin and the Parthenon and typically suspended from gallery and museum ceilings. Further defined by the use of adhesive tape, plastic bags, and other found materials, these works conjure and at the same time question the hegemony of our towering symbols of cultural heritage and political thought and might. Koshlyakov, who was born in the Rostov region of Russia in 1962 and was selected to represent Russia in the 2003 Venice Biennale, comes to town this fall as artist-in-residence at Wellesley College’s Davis Museum and Cultural Center, where "Valery Koshlyakov," an exhibit curated by the Davis Museum’s curator of contemporary art, Anja Chávez, opens October 19. The show will include two new, site-specific installations in the museum’s lobby that the artist is busily creating even as you read.

It’s not surprising to learn that Koshlyakov was trained as a set designer for the theater; his sense of drama is apparent in the presentation and the scale of his art. There’s also a political edge in these fragmented reproductions of marble and granite edifices that were built to symbolize the permanence and immutability of the institutions they embody. Koshlyakov gives us grandeur with scars, glamor with its seams showing, vulnerable theatricality.

Moving from masking tape to high-tech electronics: "Feed: Artists + Digital Influence" also opens October 19, at Mass College of Art’s Bakalar Gallery, showcasing Carl Fudge, Brian Knep, Lakasz Lysakowski, Cameron Shaw, Penelope Umbrico, Joe Wood, and Sue Yang, all of whom use digital technology as an intermediary step in their art. The unusual work here ranges from Fudge’s complex abstract paintings to sculptural work by Shaw that employs pure light as its medium to Yang’s meditative digital ponds complete with hypnotic lily pads.

Contemporary printmakers who embrace the third dimension are the subject of "Off the Wall <rethinking the print>," which, curated by Donna Ruff, will be on view at the New Art Center in Newton through the end of the month. No longer content to be screen-printed and hung on a wall, the work in this show is bouncing all over the place, printmaking having been combined with sculpture, photography, book arts, and the digital realm. Spend an eye-opening afternoon at the New Art Center on October 16 as April Flanders, Jane Miller, Kaz McCue, Jill Parisi, and Claudia Sbrissa and curator Ruff discuss their unorthodox approaches to this traditionally 2-D medium.

"Valery Koshlyakov" is at the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College, 106 Central Street in Wellesley, October 19 through January 31, with an opening reception October 19 at 5 p.m.; call (781) 283-2051. "Feed: Artists and Digital Influence" is at the Sandra and David Bakalar Gallery at Massachusetts College of Art, 621 Huntington Avenue in Boston, October 19 through December 11, with an opening reception October 19 from 5 to 7 p.m.; call (617) 879-7333. "Off the Wall<rethinking the print>" is at the New Art Center, 61 Washington Park in Newton, through October 31, with a free public gallery talk with the artists on October 16 from 2 to 4 p.m.; call (617) 964-3424.


Issue Date: October 8 - 14, 2004
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