The Transformer of the Former
The acceptance of the fact that Utopias cannot be realized is a statement of failure which is also, in a higher sense, a success. On the one hand, the “great longing for a great defeat”; on the other hand, confirmation that failure has become a speculative phenomenon. Defeat is celebrated like a victory, a victory as a defeat. If boredom is conducive to philosophizing, then melancholy is even more so, considering that melancholic spleen is a synonym for the dejection that we feel when contemplating unvarnished reality; this is particularly true of zealous champions of beauty and harmony, who include quite a few members of the political class and of economic elites. No wonder that hi-tech beauty has taken the place of low-tech one, once destined (according to Dostoevsky) “to save the world.” To enjoy the swap, one needs to “amen up” the various rips and chinks through which the gaze of a critically engaged artist can see the nakedness of the reality underneath. The reality underneath is tinted with corporate and financial terrorism, aimed at conquering new markets for trade and territories rich in oil reserves. But unlike those who “amen it up,” Andrei Molodkin sincerely exposes such sins to the light of interpretation, or (even) self-scrutiny. His Transformer no. V579 (consisting of oil and light tubes) is perfectly fitted for a transformative change, ranging from paranoia to metanoia. Upon exiting the Transformer, the viewers are expected to become true revolutionaries, capable of achieving a variety of mutually exclusive goals.
Dr. Victor Tupitsyn
The Transformer of the Latter
Constructivism must become the highest form of engineering in all of life.
Lef, 1923
Andrei Molodkin’s Transformer no. V579, like his New Architekton (2010), is a hybrid of industrial tubes filled with light and oil. Assembled out of 6 modules, they form a black-and-white structure, measuring 8 meters long, 5 meters wide, and 2.5 meters high. New Architekton is a “cold” and “rigid” structure,” attached to a wall and spread across the floor with prescribed functions and a calculated state of equilibrium. Transformer no. V579 is also a free-standing “tectonic monolith” with the aim of “shaping the real.” In Constructivist terms, such work represents a new type of synthesis between the ideological and the formal--a synthesis that does not allow the artist to ignore the immediate needs of society. Introducing the word “tectonics” in his 1922 treatise Constructivism, Marxist critic Aleksei Gan relied on its connotations to movement--alteration and volcanic eruption in the earth's crust (what we witness now in Iceland and Chile)--all ample metaphors for revolutionary drama (taking place in the Middle East) and economic crisis (globally). Transformer no. V579 is designed with two openings and is installed in such a way that the viewer must walk through it. As he/she move the two openings, the perception of the entire environment changes. This work thus expresses a conviction shared by the historical avant-garde and the postwar neo-avantgarde (in this context one may think of Vladimir Tatlin’s Tower, 1919, and Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc, 1981), that geometry generates “unfamiliar forms” and is able to transform the viewer’s consciousness as a result. Hence, in Transformer no. V579 Molodkin, like Liubov Popova in the early 1920s, insists that “nonobjective form is not the final form: it is the revolutionary condition of form.”
Dr. Margarita Tupitsyn
