Expressionist talent

Oleg Kudryashov is first of all an expressionist by temperament and then a constructivist, which qualities place him directly in the great tradition of the radical Russian avant-garde of the early decades of the century. He works principally in dry point on large metal sheets, which he attacks with a direct and fierce energy. To classify him narrowly as a printmaker, however, would be quite wrong. He never editions his plates, and even a repeated proof is reworked on the paper to make it unique. The printed sheet, rather, is his material, to be cannibalised, collaged or otherwise reconstituted into the finished work. The relief is his true metier, the print as sculpture, rolled and cut, folded and crumpled, with the image on the surface at once contradicting and articulating the three dimensional reality of the piece. These objects are direct, unprecious and manifestly physical in themselves. Lately Kudryashov has taken the next logical step in the formal development of his ideas, by cutting and folding the metal itself into high relief, leaving only the colour and line untranslated. And yet the metal brings with it a whole world of change, the image heavy of itself and oddly static and monumental in direct contrast to the lightness and energy of the paper works. This is not to say that they are worse, only different – but who knows where such difference might lead.