Valery Yurlov's exhibition "It was - it became", presented at the Photobiennale-2022" in the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow.

“The object as a witness can convey to us the knowledge that it contains if we can ask it the right questions,” writes Jean Gabus (Gabus, 1965), referring us to one of the introductory practices of museology, where the logic of the object and its model are considered further develop within the framework of certain scientific disciplines, often losing their original meaning, design.

It is easy to see that, like the logic itself, the main issue of the subject, the stylistic decision, the material and any other important components of the subject itself occupy a central position in its characterization. Photography, as a separate subject of study, as well as a tool for knowing things, represents for us unique conditions for working with space, where time not only freezes, but also enters into a single contact with the viewer, confirming the existence of something, while not interacting directly with him. Directly, the artist gradually transforms the very concepts and understanding of photography as a field of pure chance, which does not have an inseparable meaning. Photography struggles with the idea of inevitable limitations in its interpretation, with the consolidation of a single idea. In the position of photographic perception, the artist conveys to us a message about reality, but the message is fragmentary, emotionally alienated from nature and its structure and rules. This attraction to pure visuality further served to create new forms of expression, subjective decision and the formation of a modernist language and approach to such a phenomenon as photography. Not only forms and presentations were replaced, but also the understanding of such fundamental concepts as the connection between photography and knowledge. Minor White comprehended the position of the beholder and the object, noting that “the consciousness of the photographer during creativity is not filled with anything ... when he is looking for a picture, the photographer projects himself on everything that he sees, identifies himself in everything in order to know it and feel it better.” Here, for the first time, they will talk about photography as cognition without knowledge, where the factor of subjective artistic decision removes and violates the nature and autonomy of the photographed object, allowing it to coexist in a single dialogue with reality without interrupting it.

No matter how curious the concept of photography as exceptional transparency in time and space is, free play with the photographed object, its shape, tone, texture and silhouette allows us to look at the nature of things in the face of non-conformist views on the question of unity.

The general orientation of the neo-avant-gardists, including Valery Yurlov, as one of the outstanding representatives of conceptualism, “the pioneer of post-war abstraction”, was formed on the ideas of the classics of modernism like Ezra Pound and his exclusive goal of “making the old new”. The old not only became new, but often completely lost its original position, becoming on a level above the previous idea or even working in an intertextual way, where the subject is everywhere and always, where the visual “I” exists outside of any plane or time. The system of images developed by Yurlov directly intersects with the conceptual traditions of pictorial art. The act of perception is the very process of finding that very “message” that the viewer is looking for voluntarily. The neo-avant-garde artist conveys to us the main message of his work by resorting to natural forms, further revealing them through more subtle abstractions that are accessible to us for understanding.

The main leitmotif of the “Before and Now” exhibition is the synthesis of two opposing principles and their organic place in the world, which we are so tremblingly aware of and experiencing. And an important function of this type of contemplation, where the object acquires its specific code only after it is found, directly meets the requirement of the conceptual school: the idea is secondary, the birth and existence of the object as a natural whole is the main source of the starting and semantic power of the work. So, the very history of the birth of “It was-became” is no less sentimental in itself. Found by Yurlov on the seashore in Gulripsha, where the artist lived in the late 1950s, a tin can broken by a wave served to create a series of works where “living” and “dead” take a neutral position, completing each other and looping the space surrounding their.

Noting the main feature of this series of works, it is certainly worth mentioning a few points that reveal the ideological beginning of Yurlov's artistic language more fully. Let's turn to the basics of expressiveness of abstract art: Yurlov not only works with simple plasticity and lines of forms, but also with their structure. It is important to note that there is no color tone, and the form itself goes a long way in search of the meaning embedded in itself as a kind of germ of reality that the artist builds in front of the viewer.

Valery Yurlov. Rhythm. 1984. Oil on canvas. Provided by the author

Let's consider this line of plot development using the example of one of Yurlov's works, namely a photograph with a bitten apple.

Valery Yurlov. It was-Became. 1968.

This work undoubtedly experiences the boundaries of certain ideological and aesthetic possibilities, but the very tone of the work, and, most importantly, the law of associativity does not destroy, but, on the contrary, is presented in a new light of events and patterns. As mentioned a little earlier, any photograph creates a system of certain oppressions, randomness is a fundamental element. Yurlov, on the other hand, fulfills time itself in front of us, where chance is already somewhat impossible, but inappropriate in itself. Two objects are mirrored, they are autonomous and exist both remote from one another and part of a single entity. Similar reflections on the essence of things and their materiality can be noted in the ideas of Nicholas of Cusa, a medieval theologian and philosopher, who developed a model in which each individual thing reflects the entire universe, and it in turn exists in each individual form. The concept of the microcosm, aimed at the human “I” and the world that is defined by us, builds a new type of perception, where a bitten apple equally possesses and has the right to possess the micro-universe, since it is an invariable part of it.

Both organic life and artificial life, considered by us in the face of a broken bottle, combines two forms of materiality, existence and non-existence.

In the corpus of works “It was-became”, not only the expressive ambiguity of forms and the aesthetic solution of the conceptual component of the works are noted, but also the “message”, standing on a contextual level above each image and abstraction. Polysemy in this message is expressed in the coexistence of two poles in a harmonious relationship, both semantic and artistic. Yurlov brings objects closer to him in spatial and, in particular, human complicity. The artist opens up for us a new number of endless possibilities, where time and place exist as an aggregate, inextricably abiding in a community.