Article:
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST
Magazine issue:
#3 2012 (36)
All of us were once taught that the world was propelled by contradictions, the unity and struggle of opposites, and other similar principles. Perhaps the most valuable among these ideas is the notion of paradox, which implies a discord between meanings so striking that the mind at first refuses to accept them. Ivan Leonidovich Lubennikov is a true artist of paradoxes. If viewers familiar with his very aestheticised and ironic easel paintings learn that he also created the fanciful steel structures inside or on the facades of certain buildings, they are bound to think that this fact runs counter to the laws of nature and society.
All of us were once taught that the world was propelled by contradictions, the unity and struggle of opposites, and other similar principles. Perhaps the most valuable among these ideas is the notion of paradox, which implies a discord between meanings so striking that the mind at first refuses to accept them. Ivan Leonidovich Lubennikov is a true artist of paradoxes.