Leonid Petrushin, a master-hand in portraying and realistic drawing in general, this time presented to the public his cycle “Kinetic Objects”. The reason for versatility of his attainments ought to be searched for not only in his personality, but also in the most solid education he got when studying to become a poster designer, that being a profession that requires universal view of the world, since it is supposed to be depicted in a poster mostly by means of signs and symbols.
Kinetic objects by Petrushin, in a measure associated with perspective geometry, are thus the outmost edge of the geometric abstraction. If we take into account that symbol implies expression of some general concepts, and sign that of some individual meanings, than Petrushin’s Objects are an ingeniously verified and constructed semiotic system. Design of many of these sign-pictures, in spite of their spectacular minimalism, may be close to metaphoric solutions of specific concepts and phenomena.
This feature of Petrushin’s kinetic objects “justifies” conventionality of the title: the word “kinetica” in Greek means “one putting in motion”, and as to kinetic art, it is art dealing in moving objects. That means Petrushin shows us not the motion itself, but the metaphor of motion, and in this rather a paradoxical joining of mutually exclusive principles, that of motion and of static, is the ginger, the wit and the point of the author’s idea.
To be sure, efforts to convey motion on the pictorial surface or in sculpture have happened since most ancient times: consider, for example, depiction of dances. But in our case motion is shown by means of up-to-date plastic language that correlates with concepts of modern science almost directly. And the most important thing is that kinetic objects by Petrushin not only reproduce the equivalent of the real movement, but also express a certain idea of human thought moving in real and metaphysical dimensions (the most telling example is the “Enfilade”, 1991. By the way, certain elements of Petrushin’s Objects, getting beyond the author’s intention, correlate by their architectonics with de Chirico’s Pittura metafisica, with its most conventional representations of real objects and familiar true-life relationships).
When perceiving Petrushin’s Objects it is especially interesting to follow meandering twists the ingenious mind of the artists takes. Titles, conceptually inseparable from the objects, much help with such comprehension (it is not like with some landscape, when one can understand that birch-trees are birch-trees without any titles), they are like keys that open, but not reveal the true meaning. Then it is the turn of the beholder’s mind to play, though it is common knowledge that no artifact may be comprehended by the beholder fully, and that full comprehension is not needed in fact; the paths the creator’s mind and the beholder’s mind follow may at certain stage diverge.
Part of the presented Objects are closer to reality (“Subway”, 1991; “Diaphragm”, 1996; “Window”, 1995 and a number of other compositions). Some are endued with archetypical properties that take us to the holy of holies of any artist, the subconscious. Besides, Petrushin’s compositions are type design constructed, the basic principle resembling orthogonal projection. An object is represented on the flat surface in four dimensions: one “main” aspect and three smaller ones, that sort of explain and compliment the meaning of the main aspect – if it were possible to read its meaning directly.
How did Pushkin put it about a man of genius being on friendly terms with paradoxes? We won’t deal with such terms as “genius” in present case, but the fact is, it is paradox that Petrushin’s cycle is based on.