12 dreams of Kharms

Deliberate simplicity of Daniil Kharms' literature, provoking explosions of wild fantasies; his Saint Petersburg origin, gave an impetus to Saint Petersburg artist Simon Yakovlevich Gulyako to create a graphic series "12 dreams of Kharms".

Speaking of Simon Gulyako, I often mentioned the word "underestimated". Indeed, just a few years ago, the artist was rather little known. The situation has changed recently, as museums drew their attention to Simon Gulyako, and his gallery shows became more frequent - in a word, the ice has broken. The current exhibition not only presents him as an artist, but also focuses on one direction of his work - on his relationship with the poetics of Daniil Kharms. Gulyako is an artist committed to an abstract method. This method by definition is incapable of illustrating, reproducing, mimetic. It has "nothing" to capture the texture of life in its rich details and illogical ordinary with. His net draws another thing - visual analogues of some major routes of Kharms' thought. Reseachers (for example, M.B. Yampolsky in the book "Unconsciousness as a source (Reading Kharms)" (1998)) have long defined the through motives in the poetry, drama and prose of Daniil Kharms. There are several of them. I suppose, such motives as the window and water/fluidity, are the closest to him. The researcher of Kharms' work calls the window an unusual optical "device", the converter of a name into a spatial, geometric structure and of a geometric scheme into letters. The window acts as a translator of images into words, words into images. Gulyako in an astounding manner comes to a visual problematization of this transformation. Straight lines (frame construction and, perhaps, protective paper tapes, attached crosswise) lose their geometry. But, they acquire mobility and a kind of cellular otherness: they resemble micro samples of animal tissues under a microscope: labyrinths, colonies, spirals. They are monogenic due to the fluidity of some mobile matter, filling all these sleeves and channels - it is a process of all-pervading, similar to blood circulation. Gulyako does not hold on to the scale: the micro turns into the macro, and the images are like some star sings; as Levi-Strauss said, "guiding star routes". Or, if you take the distance of the balloon, the paths, trampled by the townspeople on yellow snow. In any case, this is a trace of a living person, a Kharms' trace. 

Tuesdays, over the pavement

The balloon flew empty.

He floated quietly in the air;

In it, someone smoked a small pipe,

Looked at the squares, gardens,

Looked calmly until Wednesday,

And on Wednesday, he put out the lamp

And he said said: Well, the city is alive.

--

Alexander Borovsky.