Vitali Gambarov

Vitali Gambarov (Saint Petersburg,Montreal, New York) is a Russian born sculptor, painter and philosopher. Vitali Gambarov received Masters of Fine Arts from the Fine Art and Theater School of Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. His sculptures have received numerous major awards and have become integral parts of the urban landscape of the cities of Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Montreal and Tashkent. Vitali has been inspired by the formal traditions of Russian Avant-garde, artists Malevich and Tatlin and by architecture of Kenzo Tange while developing a unique style that characterizes his current oeuvre.
Traveling across Central Asia, I took part in the excavation of ancient Hunnes burials. When archeologists brushed off the dust , the brown surface of the earth revealed ramshackle remains or armor and jewelry from metal gold and leather. Time destroys everything. Everything decays. The view that appeared available to me in that moment inspired the present body of work. My actions are opposite to the process of disintegration. I collect the whole from separate pieces, using a palette of decay. I carefully prepare each elements from black metal, copper, bronze and leather to restore the vanished human images.
The black and white palette brings out some idiosyncratic elements of Gambarov's art that are destabilizing and unsettling. The frontal faces of his figures might lack some physiognomic features, staring out at the viewer with phantasmagoric visages. Their features are rendered in the posterior position, at times allowing only a peripheral glance at their faces. The personages that inhabit Gambarov's sculptures and bas-reliefs are constantly in contact with the audience, revealing their identity or deliberately avoiding any contact with the viewer.
Like day and night, good and evil, Life and Death everything in the world exists in duality . Inspired and moved by the contradictory yet harmonious nature of the human being I work with white and black. Vitali Gambarov's oeuvres are shown in Grant Gallery, New York

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