Konstantin Bokov (1940 - )

In life and art Konstantin Bokov has found himself acting the mediator between cultures and art movements. A painter, junk artist and collagist, Bokov makes the recycling of cultural and industrial waste the central theme of his work.
Unlike two previous personal shows (in New York and San Francisco) that presented Bokov's "recycle" pieces as his most characteristic creations, the scheduled exhibition will also feature a number of large triptych-like canvases that put a grotesque and ironic spin on popular icons, smaller oil-sketches of New York City landscapes, still-lifes that often frame an imported artistic image, and drawings. These works employ the language of impressionism but disrupt the laws of classical depiction in unexpected ways and places that move the paintings into the realm of the absurd.

Almost 25 years ago the ideologically unreliable artist was expelled from the Soviet Union. Since then he has found solidarity with the marginalized waste of American culture, wandering the streets of New York City and reconstructing a new city from its discarded scraps. Along with countless recycle monsters he has left as gifts to the Soho streets, Bokov has erected impromptu gallery spaces under the Brooklyn Bridge, on the George Washington Bridge, and on the piers of Washington Heights, most of which have been destroyed. Indoors and legally zoned, the exhibition at the Philip Williams Gallery displayed a variety of Bokov's canvases and recycle pieces that offer through his skewed verbal and visual syntax, an image of New York City which is both a scathing critique and a profession of love.