Konstantin Bessmertny
From Russia with Love
On the 25th of October, Konstantin Bessmertny inaugurated his latest solo exhibition in Macau at St. Paul’s Fine Art. Monumentum Pro (“Monument for...”) is a continuation of his Si Monumentum Requiris, Circumspice series, which was presented at the Macau Pavilion of the 52nd Venice Biennale. His last solo exhibition in Macau was 2007’s Edictus Ridiculum, held at the Macau Art Museum.
Fifteen years after moving to Macau, Bessmertny continues to see the city as the home of his inspiration. The artist describes his arrival in the territory as “love at first sight.” It was in 1993 that the young Russian artist and recent graduate was invited to participate in the Contemporary Russian Art Exhibition in Macau’s Leal Senado – and “love at first sight” was not just Bessmertny’s side of the story. Macau, as well, embraced Bessmertny’s talent without reserve.
“My connection with China can be traced back to my birth,” Bessmertny recalls. “I was born in Blagoveshchensk near the border between the Russian Far East and Northeastern China. The hospital where I was delivered was situated near the Amur River (Heilong Jiang) which forms the border. When my mother held me in her arms for the first time, I was facing a window that opened towards China.”
Bessmertny began attending school and by the age of six had already earned himself a reputation as “the artist”. “Both my teachers and my mother recognised in me a passion to create things. Once, I stayed after school at the kindergarten because my parents had to work late, and I started making sculptures with the materials I found there. I still remember very vividly the pleasure I got from using my hands to compose those objects.” At seven years old Bessmertny won his first art prize, and at age 11 his mother decided to enrol him in an art school.
“The artistic training in Russia at the time was well disciplined. Realism was a very serious study in school.” Bessmertny remarks critically that “Realism” nowadays is often confused with superficial techniques such as American Photorealism, in which the objects are depicted by overtly copying effects from photography. “True realism,” he says, “is like a sculptor crafting his material. One has to break it away slowly, piece by piece. It is a very intellectual process.” Bessmertny admits that even now, he is against the use of photography in painting. “Honesty in the way an artist achieves the results in his work is very important, because it is the process that counts.”
During those formative years, Bessmertny considered himself happy. “I had a happy childhood and was probably even a bit spoiled. Then, between the ages of 16 and 19, I attended the Far Eastern State Pedagogical Institute in Khabarovsk and met amazing teachers there. In those days, the State would provide subsidies to art students if they
were good, so I was living quite well at the time. Life was certainly sweet for me.”
At the age of 20, the young artist entered the Institute of Fine Art in Vladivostok. The following six years of formal artistic training were crucial to his development as an individual. Unlike in mainstream art academies such as those in Moscow, Bessmertny had more freedom in Vladivostok to develop his own thoughts. “It’s not about copying blindly from the masters, as still happens nowadays in some art academies in China, for example. You respect your teachers, of course, but then you also try to understand the limit of the materials and the rules of the game. It’s important to bear in mind that it is within the rules that the genius creates.” It was in this way that Bessmertny found his own way through the thick mists of Classicalism, with the mind of an avant-garde.
In Macau, Bessmertny’s works matured further and have garnered enormous success and popularity among the local art audience and fellow artists. The infallible combination of skill and humour in Bessmertny’s work is generally recognised as his path to success. Kent Ieong, curator of “Edictus Ridiculum” which was Bessmertny’s last solo exhibition in Macau, described the artist as “extremely smart.
“Not only does he have the skills, he has a very vivid sense of humour which led him to make Macau a playground for
his talents. At a time when Macau is undergoing such heavy changes, his playfulness is very much welcomed. He has instinctively sensed this for Macau, and that is very smart,” Ieong said.
In his current solo exhibition, Monumentum Pro, Bessmertny displays his latest series of works. Portuguese artist José Drummond comments on the cinematographic nature of these recent paintings: “Narration has always been an important element in Bessmertny’s work. It is through the narrative that he tells his jokes. These latest paintings, in which he has transposed scenes from films onto the canvas, are in fact very bold. The remakes of famous films, the intentional mistakes in the Chinese/English subtitles like those seen on a bad DVD copy, all these are in fact very conceptual and are hilarious!” Drummond continues, “In addition to this, his skills show that he is very sincere in the way he treat his materials and subjects. It is very direct. This sincerity is particularly touching for me.”
As confirmed by the artist himself, the true motivation behind his art is in fact the “irreplaceable pleasure of the hand-making process.” As to the reason behind his success and popularity, the artist smiles somewhat shyly and answers, “Honesty is important.”