THE WORK OF RUSSIAN IGOR & MARINA ATTEMPTS TO GIVE NEW MEANING TO FAMILIAR IMAGES.
IGOR & MARINA | ARTICULATE #16 | JULI 2018

Chicago based husband-and-wife team, Igor Kozlovsky (b. 1956, Slobodskoi, Kirov Region, Russia) and Marina Sharapova (b. 1960, Leningrad, Sankt-Petersburg, Russia) is an artistic team working together on the same projects, including those of canvases.
 
The work of Igor & Marina is characterized by a remarkable fusion of seemingly incongruous elements: past and present, figurative and abstract, traditional and avant-garde. In images of striking beauty and depth, Renaissance-era figures float over backgrounds of cryptic text and ornaments while areas of intricate, realistic detail coexist with expanses of abstract layered color. Igor and Marina attempt to “give new meaning to familiar images, placing them in unexpected frames.” Synthesizing the modes and motifs of various historical periods of the arts into coherent, arresting images, they cause great distances of time and geography to collapse.

The theme of fusion is not limited to the content of Igor and Marina’s work. They themselves describe the excellency of both being artists and being married, which at times becomes a problem when working together as close as they do, as each painting represents an extraordinary feat of collaboration between two artistic minds. The couple explains: “First of all, though we have been together for twenty years, whenever we work on a picture together, we spend most of our time arguing.

Perhaps this isn't all that surprising. Van Gogh and Gauguin tried to work together in Arles. They stood side-by-side, produced some wonderful work, and ultimately came to hate each other.” Yet even if collaboration is an art on its own, which produces conflict rather than synthesis, the result of the collaboration between Igor & Marina is an entirely unique artistic landscape where tradition and innovation collide.
 
Primarily, the conflict is initiated since the artists approach a canvas from different directions. Igor's specialty is a subtle sense for color, a wonderful appreciation for the tactile nature of paint, canvas, and wood, and an intuitive feel for how to play with abstract images. Marina, on the other hand, possesses an excellent and subtle touch for realistic drawing and is capable of creating new images on the basis of the works of older artists, particularly those of the Italian and Dutch renaissance. The married team has been working towards their present level of cooperation for many years, first employing the techniques of realist art, then becoming interested in the achievements of abstraction, then those of the Russian avantgarde.

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Igor & Marina have studied the techniques and conceptions of Russian religious art, inspired by the work of Andrei Rublev and Dionysius alongside those of the West European renaissance. They became aware of the great contributions of East European artists to modern visual art, including such deeply spiritual figures as Chagall, Kandinsky, and Malevich alongside their education in the techniques of Picasso and Matisse.

In their work they strive to synthesize these traditions. In this synthesis of Western post renaissance art with the Russian tradition, the religious tradition in particular, that has given their work a new and unusual profile. They attempt to combine what might seem incompatible: the bold colors of contemporary artistic practice with the achievements of the Renaissance, to which they add some surrealist notes to give a new meaning to familiar images, placing them in unexpected contexts, forcing the viewer to enter their invented world and to experience a new world of his or her own.

This article about Igor & Marina takes part of magazine,  ARTICULATE #16. Read, download or order your print version of the full publication below

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