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Email PageCaspian Dreams
September 14, 2006- October 28, 2006
Reception: September 14, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Aga Ousseinov
Dinter Fine Art
547 W 27th StDINTER FINE ART is pleased to present a solo exhibition by the New York-based Russian-born sculptor Aga Ousseinov. This exhibition marks Ousseinov's first solo exhibition at Dinter Fine Art. Previously his work has been included in the group exhibitions "MUD," September-October 2005, and "Drawn," March-April 2006.
Growing up in the Soviet Union, on the edge of the Caspian Sea, as a young boy Ousseinov looked out on the watery horizon and imagined a different world. The son of an artist and architect, with an older brother, Ousseinov spent his childhood surrounded by his family's circle of cultured friends, absorbing their interests.
At the age of 10, Ousseinov saw Sergei Eisenstein's film The Battleship Potemkin (1925). This film revealed and confirmed the existence of a world beyond the everyday. Not only the dramatic graphics of the film, but the life of the artist (filmmaker) left a strong impression on the young boy: equally as important as the material object was the act of living a life based on a philosophical point of view. (Later, Ousseinov submitted a drawing of the battleship to a children’s art competition. In response he received a letter thanking him for the submission and commenting that the drawing looked very "gloomy,” but that it would be accepted anyway. It did not place. However, the letter survived.)
Another early influence and inspiration came while reading Tommaso Campanella's La Cittá del Sole (1623) at the age of 14. Ousseinov was curious to discover that Campanella's descriptions of Utopia seemed to reflect the world around him at that time, as he observed it: a live version of the Utopian dream. Other early influences include the filmmaker Georges Méliès and the Georgian outsider artist Niko Pirosmani.
During afterschool activities Ousseinov developed an interest in airplanes. The early years of aviation attracted many artists and intellectuals at the time, including Franz Kafka, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and F.T. Marinetti, to name a few. Ousseinov took his interest one step further through a reinterpretation of this and other inventions, stripping them of their original purpose. In the transition the airplane grew legs, the pilot became a bird...
Ousseinov pieces his works together using the finest art materials. Beginning with an armature, usually of wood or wire, he proceeds to build the framework with linen and rice paper and paper pulp. Then using hydrocal and occasionally plaster, it is finished with tempera, sometimes in the fresco method. Ousseinov also has a preference for the old stucco technique developed in the antique world: applying fabric dipped in gypsum to an armature, carving it, covering it with lime, then painting it with pigments. This was first used by the Sumerians, and its use was continued up to the Etruscans and beyond.
This exhibition includes a group of portraits (i.e., Méliès, Campanella) produced in the old Etruscan manner. As well, we see a wartime cameraman—an artist put to work for the political machine, his talents abused, his soul in misery. We see a submarine, a car driven by a group of Futurists, a windmill with oil tanks in a lopsided mirror image, a battleship, a large airplane either landing or taking off... As well, we see a model of the Caspian Sea itself, positioned on the floor, anchoring the objects and images, which reflect a childhood fascination with machines and dreams.
Born in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 1962, Ousseinov studied at, and received an MFA degree in 1986 from, the V. I. Surikov Fine Arts Institute in Moscow. In 1992, he moved to New York, where he continues to live and work. Besides showing his work widely both here and abroad, Ousseinov has assisted the artists Donald Baechler, Saint Clair Cemin and Not Vital with their sculpture projects.
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show
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