With Limited Means
VIKTOR TIMOFEEV
His is not the cry of a starving artist. You will find no melodrama here. Instead, these drawings are landscapes of potential. Take the Rubik’s cube for instance; though marketed as a child’s toy, it is a maddening example of arithmetical geometry and the exploration of types. The cube is a compositional vehicle for artist Viktor Timofeev. The small, shifting planes and colors are like a landscape “to-go.” Breaking from the imposing architectural sources of his previous work, Timofeev appropriates the unmonumental into these drawings. Dumpsters, electrical adapters, play toys: these everyday objects appear disconnected from their usual settings. Some have been turned around and placed upside down in order to speak in form rather than function. Many of the drawings are composed of a simple line, perspective, or color, and yet they present this frustrating metaphor. Like the Rubik’s cube, I have never been able to solve Timofeev’s work. Though I may twist and turn the images in my head, they remain an aesthetically pleasing, scrambled enigma. There is a course and a direction. His use of found and iconic objects in hierarchical planes to scrutinize their geometry and purpose is methodical. There is an answer too, that much is clear. But to my dismay it tends to morph and change with Timofeev’s prolific pace. Perhaps the key is in the potential. There is land at the horizon, but we cannot see it. There is a reverse, however it remains hidden. Here the subject is not limited—rather it is the view.
