Art4 presents Brink, a series of drawings by Dima Filippov (b. 1989) and one of the artist’s first projects using this medium. By apparently focusing on a single landscape, one that is faintly reminiscent of past journeys and images of places in his home town of Gornyak in Altai Krai, he explores the space in which landscape and abstraction meet. Borderlands, unstable spaces and how humans relate to those types of landscape are a source of continued interest for Filippov, but his use of drawing as a means of artistic expression is relatively new. As he puts it, ‘For me, drawing was always something casual, something involving sketching, but now I have a much stronger relationship to it. [. . .] Drawing is a starting point that can lead to other art forms and to a different view of art as a whole’.
The works in Brink are not based on photographs or preparatory sketches. Filippov’s ‘familiar’ landscapes are an ethereal space with a recognisable horizon that operates as a point of focus to draw in the viewer and encourage meditation on perspective, pattern and colour. Using the medium of drawing to create landscapes depicting elements of his past, he creates an expanse in which we can contemplate our own journeys and find common ground.
About the artist
Dima Filippov is a contemporary artist and curator. He was born in Gornyak, Altai region, in 1989. Filippov graduated from the Institute of Contemporary art, Moscow, participated in the residences of the Siyanie Center for Contemporary Art (Apatity, 2023), Kurant gallery (Tromso, Norway, 2015), Divnogorye (Voronezh, 2015). Winner of the START sculpture competition at Winzavod Center of Contemporary Art (Moscow, 2011).
Since 2013, Filippov is a co-organiser and curator of the Elektrozavod gallery in Moscow. The goal of the gallery is to provide a space and opportunity for young artists to show their works to a general audience. From 2017, Filippov is a co-creator of the project Expedition — a long-term research platform aiming to explore different Russian regions with difficult past like border areas, fields, abandoned territories or former factories.
Dima Filippov’s works reproduce the new trend of 'sustainable' art. In the mode of constant involvement, the artist reflects on the current situation, turns to the 'small' memory of a particular person and to a collective artistic experience. His works belong to the international trend of reinterpretation of the history of modern art. He plastically modifies the conceptual practices, shifts the emphasis to the 'tactility' and 'sonority' of the landscape, compares the personal and universal in the coordinates of place and time, and enters a complex of new relationships and artistic practices into the field of contemporary art.
Image credit: (detail) Courtesy of Art4 Gallery.
