Rustam Khalfin

He was born in 1949 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.[1] While pursuing an architecture degree at the Moscow Architectural Institute, he began his artistic career.[1] Upon his move to Almaty, Kazakhstan, Khalfin met his future wife and "comrade-in-arms", as he would refer to her, Lida Blinova.[1] The couple grew to hosting exhibitions and philosophical discussions in their apartment by the mid-1980s.[1] Their circle included artists Ablai Karpykov and Boris Yakub.[2] He painted while he worked as an architect for the state.[2]

At these discussions at their home, he taught his “bowl-dome system of painting” to students.[1] This system came from Vladimir Sterligov, who he met in 1971.[1] The idea sprang from Kazimir Malevich's theory of the "additional element", the idea that an artist would come up with new structures and methods of painting as they developed as an artist.[1] Sterligov's "additional element" was a way of composing a painting via a curve, influenced by the scientific theory that the universe consists of an infinite number of touching spheres.[1] Much of Khalfin's early work was centered on the "bowl-dome system".[1] Khalfin's incorporation of Sterligov's, and in turn, Malevich's ideas put him in the a direct line of descent from the Russian classical avant-garde.[2] In his early career, his works were exhibited in semiunderground galleries in Moscow and Leningrad with other Sterligov followers like G. Zubkov, M. Tserush, and A. Kozhin.[2]

Seeking his own "additional element", Khalfin came up with the idea of "pulotas", which he defined as "the void inside a fist".[1] The word was a portmanteau of the Russian words pustota (void) and kulak (fist).[2] The theory drew attention to Kazakhstani nomadic practices and the tactility of household practices like hand-molding kurt.[1] Blinova described what goes inside the "pulota", objects grasped by the hand like clay and food, as rudimentary sculptures.[1] If the fist was empty, the void could be used as a simple optic tool to look through, fragmenting one's field of view.[1] Khalfin's work referred to Matisse, Cézanne, Malevich, Velazquez, and Beuys but all were based on his idea of "pulotas". The theory's origins in the particular ways of life of Kazakhstani people was, additionally, a departure from Soviet uniformity, formalism, and constraints.[1] Seen from another point of view, his work exoticized Kazakhstani culture, with its predominant nomadic life ways almost shown as "primitive".[1]

The artist's works include the Broken Pieces (1989 - 1992) and Self Portraits without a Mirror (1993 - 1996) series.[2] After the collapse of the Soviet Union, his ties to artists in Russia frayed.[2] His work was more influenced by Duchamp and Beuys in this period.[2] In the mid-1990s, his wife Lida Blinova died of cancer.[2] Khalfin's first performance art piece, Autumnal Gestures of Wrath, was staged in 1996; he chopped "cabbage heads stationed on tall podiums that were supposed to imitate sculpture plinths."[2]

His video work includes Northern Barbarians (2000), which reconstructs the life of nomads through a lens of romantic and sexual intimacy on the steppes, a far cry from typical idyllic nomadic scenes.[2] One of the works depicts a man and a woman having sex on top of a horse, an image drawn from an Old Chinese etching.[2] Much of his work deriving from traditional nomadic life was part of a stream of Kazakhstani art that reconstructed traditional life, shaping a new identity for a newly independent country.[2] Other artists that worked with the same themes were E. Meldibekov, S. Atabekov, and A. Menlibayeva.[2] The work was the last he did before a stroke paralyzed half his body.[2]

Khalfin's major installation Level Zero. The Clay Project (1999 - 2001) was an 18-meter clay human figure placed in a two-story building in fragments.[1] It was funded by the newly established George Soros Centre for Contemporary Arts branch in Almaty.[2] He created and destroyed the figure, the clay representing the "quintessence of plasticity".[1] For him, "a figure of the dismembered main character is a metaphor for disassociation, disconnection of people in today's world, and, in particular in [the Kazakhstani] artistic community."[2] His work was a rallying cry to the art community to come together and be recognized on the global stage.[1] The installation had to be destroyed when the building's landlord rented the space to another tenant.[1] The destruction of his work affected his health and he suffered a stroke that paralyzed the entire left half of his body.[1][2] In 2005, he and other Central Asian artists presented their work to a global audience at the Venice Biennale.[1][2] He passed away three years later in 2008 in Almaty.[1][2][3] His works have been exhibited at major international shows in Canada, Germany, Italy, and Spain.[2]