A. Kasteev State Museum of Art, Almaty
1998
The performance took place at a space that was a part of the "Towards Realizing the Border" event, which also had Khalfin's involvement. The significant and ideological component of this event centered around a giant window, which separated the inside of the hall from the courtyard garden.
Inside, there were strips of mirrors of varying lengths on the floor that reflected the outside world in fragmented images. A chair was placed between the strips, on top of which was a hat, raincoat, telescope on a tripod, and a 3-liter bottle containing water and redfish. Diagonally above the floor, the straps of a parachute were suspended, which was located outside the window in the courtyard and was "hovering" over the ground, attached to the branches of a nearby tree. It appeared that the straps went through the glass, and there were also strips of mirrors on the floor. Additionally, there were two metal screens with mirrors, as well as five white umbrellas, small siblings of the parachute. In this space, addressing the issue of "the border", the performance "Big Glass" took place on April 1st (reinforcing the game context). The name references Duchamp. On a chair, wearing a raincoat and hat (indicating the artist's unique status: a man in a box and a black case), someone (Khalfin) sits and stares intently through a glass panel (and so does Duchamp). Then, he gets up, and with gloved hands (cautious and detached), begins to flip the mirror strips face down. After a few minutes, other members of the project join in (an indication of lagging behind the prophetic actions of the artist). The mirrors are stacked and transported to the glass wall. The same happens in the yard. A TV screen on the floor shows everything that is happening in the room and courtyard. The glass plane, a window to the world, a screen, a picture, attracts the outside world and the inside world to it, magnetizing the space between the inside and the outside "I", causing the projections of our "I" to be fixed on it.
This is another attempt by Halpin to justify painting as a means of indirectly speaking about the world. However, when speaking in defense of painting, the artist does not risk speaking in the language of painting today. Instead, he offers objective metaphors and a game of meaning – a picture is a window into the world, and a window is just a picture of that world. The movement from an object to a painting, from a space to a plane is paradoxical and unusual in itself. We are repeating it 75 years after Marcel Duchamp. Perhaps this path will be fruitful, especially since objects themselves do this in public, and the creation of the image happens in front of an audience. This giant collection of found and created objects brings the spaces together into a single transparent plane, literally embodied in the "painting is a window to the world" concept.
On the "Big Glass" plane, there are two main directions of development in the fine arts of the 20th century - the Picasso line and the Marcel Duchamps line. In our case, these two opposing systems actively interact, creating a "new image" that exists side by side. The mobility of the static and potentially dynamic objects involved in creating a painting reflects the increased activity of border conflict in general, as well as the situation surrounding the creation of modern art.
Rustam Khalfin
Components: stained-glass window, mirror strips, parachute, window frame, white umbrellas, chair, raincoat, hat, telescope, jar with redfish, backpack. Project participants include Rustam Khalfin, Natalia Melekhina, Yulia Sorokina, Georgy Tryakin-Bukharov, Elena Vorobyova, and Viktor, as well as Vadim Dergachyov.
You can view the works and photos of the exhibition on our website by following the link.
