VLADIMIR KUSTOV. THE APPROACH OF PAST

The Approach to Past project that was created by the artist Vladimir Kustov in 2004 specially for the Russian Museum is devoted to the one of most tragic pages of the Leningrad Battle – the struggles for the Sinyavino heights during which many soviet warriors were killed. The exact number of the victims of these struggles is not determined till nowadays. Despite the fact that the planned at the Soviet time grandiose war historian memorial was not created, the Sinyavino heights the area of struggles and tombs had been marked by the Alleys of glory and obelisks that were erected by enthusiasts. Standing on the places of bloody struggles, the artist was astonished by the memorial character of the landscape itself. These places that are wounded by the traces of trenches was comprehended by the artist like a real monument. The project that is presented in the Marble Palace is devoted to memory that is the theme that with which regularly Kustov works. With the idea of memory the technical means (video and number photograph), used by the author, are also connected.

The artist brings past closer to him in three stages that are presented in exposition three plans. First and the largest of them are the panoramas that have no names, only the numbers. The panorama photographs made on Sinyavino heights are lonely, quite and nameless on principle like the nameless soldiers that are still unburied. The second, more detailed approach to past are the marks of war. They had fall out from the time to become the mention about the war. The third approach is most close. This is the so-called texture of war (earth, gun powder, metal, tobacco, bread, ashes, bandages and salt) that were commemorated with the means of macro photograph. The airless space that surrounds the things of war is deepen in the Sinyavino Symphony. In this video (sound by Stepan Toropov) two plans are combined: the present – the panorama of landscape that is photographed by the artist, and the past – documental chronicle of defense of Leningrad.