The Boundless Artistry of Dmitry Sandjiev: A Journey through Time and Space

If one were to say that Dmitry Sandjiev is inexhaustibly and excessively talented, it would be true, but entirely insufficient. The fact is that talented people are talented in different ways. Outlining at least some of the facets of Sandjiev's talent is likely possible, but only to a certain extent.

First and foremost, the master is insatiably curious, attentive, and receptive. This means that he is interested in, if not everything in the world, at least very many things. The myths of the peoples of the world interest him. The social types and characteristic physiognomies of our time captivate him just as much as the "physiognomies" and habits of certain animals. Who else among artists would have turned their own cat into the subject of numerous paintings, drawings, and prints? And these are not just "pictures of a kitty," as the inhabitants of the current blogosphere might have thought. For this artist, domestic animals, fairy-tale butterflies, and other wondrous creatures (including dinosaurs), as well as the heroes of great books (the Master, Woland, Margarita, and Pontius Pilate, among others) – these are all participants and witnesses who initiate the questioning artist into some mysteries of existence.

"From the expanse of the cosmos, mysterious flocks of cats descend upon our heads, as in the famous sheet titled 'Cat Fall.'" The realities of our reality are recognizable, but the events are most extraordinary.

Dmitry Nikitich wants to scrutinize the different faces of being and understand these challenges and enigmas, for what is happening in the world always puzzles him, attracts him, and fills him with a thirst to approach, observe, and capture.

"Forests and waters, distant countries and suburban meadows, and beyond them – metaphysical dimensions, some 'Dantesque' realms of the transcendent spheres, where energies churn and creatures of unexplored and mysterious breeds race." Envoys from other worlds, friends from the Surikov Institute, the canonized figures of cosmonauts, rural workers, steppe shepherds, and inspired sages – he awaits them all, wants to find a pictorial and graphic embodiment for them, to take them on board his 'Sanjilyot' and soar into delightful distances, depths, heights, and generally unknown places.

This insatiable openness to the world would be impossible and meaningless if not for Sandjiev's benevolence. One can say that he is an ontologically amiable observer and participant in the inexhaustible stories of existence. The question is, how in our time can such a particular psychotype arise, one that does not call for storming the next trenches and Berlins, does not succumb to comfortable relativism, does not fall into a frenzy, and does not distance itself from reality, but rather loves the world almost childishly and wants to befriend and happily live one life together with the neighbors of the universe, with the beings, essences, and elements of the cosmos.

The dynamics of his movements, the ability to change places, and a certain special reactivity stand out in the master's biography. Perhaps he cannot sit still, or fate throws him to different points of the country and the planet; it may be that fate truly moves him across the map of the world and the levels of being, and that is all he needs. He is not a homebody, to judge by his biography.

The time of our life at the turn of the eras was just predisposed to this. Our master was born in the difficult post-war years as the offspring of Kalmykia's first professional sculptor, the respected Nikita Sandjiev – one of those heroes of Soviet history who had to be transported across Eurasia from end to end, for the storms of war and the winds of repression proved irresistible in the fate of this socialist realist and author of official monuments in his homeland. The boy Dmitry was born not in the land of his ancestors, but in Siberia, where his father ended up after the deportation of the Kalmyks during the period of mass repression.

As if obeying the biographical rhythm of resettlements and changes, Dmitry Sandjiev wandered around the country, studied at the Yaroslavl Art School, and then graduated from the graphics department of the Surikov Institute in Moscow. As one might expect, his diploma work was devoted to the life of his father's kinsmen, the hardy and steadfast steppe dwellers, and was titled "The Widow of the Shepherd" (1981). This series is firmly embedded in the memory of all of us, his contemporaries and fellow artists. It was a significant milestone not only in the then-new graphics, but also in the general panorama of the arts. Expected in terms of subject matter, it turned out to be sensational in its stylistics. The laconic and exquisite elegance of the black, gray, and white masses, the sharp and dynamic rhythms – all this spoke of a world-class level, and the best masters of book and easel graphics from Europe and America, as well as art connoisseurs in different countries, had to accept the young Dima Sandjiev as their own and open the way for him to galleries and exhibition centers around the world.

The early, endearingly democratic, and at the same time sophisticated-laconic mastery of the young artist was explained, at least in part, by two circumstances. First, the young master with an open and passionate soul delved into, observed, and pondered the everyday life and behavior of his contemporaries in all the places where he had been and lived. (He spent a lot of time in his father's homeland, as well as in Moscow and on foreign trips.) Simply put, he loved and loves with his heart and soul what he depicts. This is evident to the naked eye. Secondly, he was taught and worked with such masters of book and easel graphics as Nikolai Ponomarev, Orest Verejsky, and others. The late-Soviet school of graphics (both book and easel) could compete on equal terms with the best achievements of world graphic art. The mentors knew how to instill in their students an understanding of the value of simplicity, elegance, and conciseness in the language of graphics.

The dynamics of the country and people was dynamic, dramatic, grotesque, and offered such grimaces of time, such changes of fate, that it simply took one's breath away. In the artist's youth, Soviet institutions – including art and cultural institutions – were crumbling and being liquidated. Existential supports and sources of material well-being were disappearing before our eyes. Contemporaries, participants, and victims of those events can confirm: in the process and as a result of the collapse of the Art Fund and the Union of Artists, artists found themselves in dire straits, and there were many troubles, sufferings, puzzlements, animosities, and lost destinies among us in those years.

Sandjiev did not succumb to melancholy and did not collect crumbs in the corners, like many inhabitants of the then-Moscow Maslovo district, but easily and readily adopted a nomadic lifestyle. In 1989, he began working with galleries in Scandinavia, which are not as famous as the London and Parisian shrines of art, but are distinguished by high taste and an intelligent, restrained, and serious attitude towards contemporary art. Graphics of such a level as Sandjiev's was normally monetized – especially in the context of the then-fashion for the amazing and globally popular phenomenon called Russian Perestroika.

We do not know how the reserved and impenetrable Swedes reacted to Sandjiev's sheets, but it was interesting to see those frames from the life of a country that until then had looked gloomy, somber, and hopelessly moribund, and had suddenly started to move, go, and boil. In Sandjiev's pictures, some kind of pandemonium is taking place; the world has gone off the rails, spaces are distorted and encroach on each other; policemen in caps and coats still sometimes try to take center stage and give the chaos a semblance of order, but just as often they wave their hands at the difficulties of life, go home to watch television and play the flute, pouring out the anxieties and sorrows of their law enforcement souls. Russia has not seen such police officers in the art of painting and graphics since at least the 1920s, when the free young country still knew how to laugh and rejoice in life and was not afraid to be punished for it.

The first two decades of the artist's work were mainly devoted to easel graphics and (to some extent) book illustration, and these light-footed and quick-eyed art forms reacted most vividly to the events happening around us. Sandjiev's graphics turned out to be, in its own way, chronicling. Not in the sense that he documented events precisely. His series devoted to the demise of the USSR and the first steps of the new life in new Russia are quite phantasmagorical, and there the spaces, people, and things obey not the laws of physics, not the rules of traffic, not the norms of perspective and academic drawing; the sensations of a cosmic turn and a break, a cheerful but puzzled interest on the verge of horror and delight, mark the episodes of the series "August Fantasies" (1991), dedicated to the street and square revolution in Moscow.

The moments of historical whimsicality look even more paradoxical and acute in the series "They Arrived" – but it reflects not so much events as our inner states in the days of conflicts, street clashes, shootings, and barricades at the Moscow White House.

The chronicles of the time in Sandjiev's graphics, let us emphasize this again, were never documentary. They were truthful witnesses of the time in the sense of reflecting the psychological states of the masses of people, social groups, and individuals – be they students, policemen, street gawkers, excited schoolchildren, or puzzled pensioners. And the chronicler of the spiritual life, Dmitry Sandjiev, never passed judgment on anyone and did not make diagnoses. He did not glorify the innovators and reformers of Russia, nor did he brand the reactionary circles and the then-Nazi-Communists with their assault troops. Did this eternally benevolent observer think that in history there are righteous and guilty, there are criminal acts and glorious deeds? He seemed to be accumulating his chronicles so that the inhabitants of other inhabited worlds would learn the most important thing about the events in one particular region of the Earth.

The former life was exhausted, the stagnation and impasse were broken through, but how the shaking up, perestroika, and transformation of Russia will end – only God knows.

In graphics, painting, and in the new forms of visual language (in his, so to speak, graphically-relief-pictorial products) one can see what was once called the "universal responsiveness" of Russian culture. In 2001, Dmitry Nikitich creates his polyptych "Fractured Time," dedicated to the theme of the terrible terrorist attack on New York.

At this time, Sandjiev was already a mature master and a true virtuoso of his multifaceted creative method. With the sly naivety of a steppe dweller and the erudition of a metropolitan intellectual, he set out to describe the inner life of the inhabitants of the planet. No more and no less. Moreover, it was obvious to him that his plan for a new universal art required appropriate formal means. Neither graphics nor a single painting technique was enough here. To embrace the immeasurable, that is, to capture the mythological and religious pictures of the world of any people, to reflect the collectively and historically conditioned mental states of the masses of people and individual clairvoyants, in order to speak about the life of the great living being called the Universe - for this, all possible means and techniques of fine and applied art are needed. The master now takes large wooden surfaces, covers them with underlayers (relief gypsum) and, together with the layers of paint, inserts whole scatterings of colored stones, shimmering or matte-warm minerals. We know how magically such geological "writings" work. They captivate the eye, and the maestro consciously uses this sorcery of the gifts of nature revered by people since ancient times.

The main result of the last two decades in Sandjiev's art is impressive-sized panels, composed of large forms of triptychs and polyptychs, as well as whole series of complex technical imaginative fantasies dedicated to such topics as the legends and myths of the peoples of the world (from his native Scythians to the ancient Egyptians, the inhabitants of classical Hellas, and the mysterious Mesoamerica). Cycles are born, such as "Scythian Legends" (2001), "Myths of the Planet" (2004), "Metamorphoses of the Full Moon" (2011). This stream of responses and comments from a benevolent and inexhaustible observer of the noosphere is growing over time and is turning into something akin not so much to individual self-expression as to the result of the work of an entire trend in art, almost an "academy." The artist conceived and began to implement the grand project "Ancient Civilizations" - a cycle of works in which the path of the last millennia traversed by humanity is comprehended.

The word "noosphere," which goes back to the philosophical fantasies of the great Vernadsky, appeared here not by chance. Sandjiev both reads books and sensitively picks up from the public atmosphere those currents that connect modern humanities with esoteric and similar schools of thought of Steiner and Uspensky, Vernadsky and Borges. To ask the artist about the specific philosophical origins of his present worldview is as useless as asking such questions of the luminaries of avant-gardism. Did Kandinsky, Picasso, and Paul Klee rely on the works of spirit-seekers and contemplators of the Divine energies permeating the world? Of course, they did. But they did it not the way professors or graduate students of philosophy departments do. For Sandjiev, as for other inspired and possessed by their fantasies talents, the world of the imaginary Spirit is one and indivisible. There are no boundaries between primitive paganism and classical ("classical") paganism, between Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity. The highest truths come from such lofty spheres where our earthly partitions separating philosophies, religions, and esoteric teachings do not matter. In Sandjiev's world, Carl Gustav Jung and Vladimir Vernadsky, Nikolai Fedorov and Buddha Gautama, the sages of the Bible and the OBERIU poets meet as real brothers and interlocutors in the infinite Universe of spiritual messages and meanings.

But at this point, some clarifications are necessary. The unofficial art of the past years and the esoteric-visionary painting, graphics (as well as poetry and even cinematographic experiments) of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries claim great generalizations and a special role among us. The founders and leaders of unofficial art in the Soviet Union began to construct a new system-forming myth about the connection of art with spirituality, higher forces, God, cosmic energies, and the like. The tradition of the Russian avant-garde implies the sacralization of the role of the artist. Since the history of late-Soviet and post-Soviet art has developed in many ways as a recycling process, or a revival-continuation of the avant-garde that was crossed out by the Soviet era, there is nothing unexpected in the fact that on our horizon prophets and demiurges have appeared again, who saw in their mission and their activity precisely the salvific, purifying, and renewing beginning. The artist is a ascetic, a seer, sometimes even a martyr, opening the eyes of the blinded and lost people and clearing the way to the Truth and the Light. Esotericism is indispensable here.

"The poet in Russia is more than a poet," says the well-known and somewhat worn-out, but still fair statement. We were given to understand that it was a matter of great things: life and death, faith and salvation, infinity, order and chaos. That is, about some first principles. This is a must for the prophet-artist, for the underground priest of the new unofficial art. One generation replaced another, but the breed itself did not die out. Perhaps it still has a chance to survive.

This is where the line that separates the creativity and worldview of Dmitry Sandjiev from the art of past and present visionaries and esotericists runs. As a rule, they are endowed with a "beastly seriousness." They perform sacred rites. But our hero is somehow different. He is light. Master Sandjiev narrates about the higher spheres and the truths of being, but he seeks to instill in his viewer not a sacred trembling, but a joyful sense of acceptance.

All this is ours in this world of secrets and higher truths. The gods and goddesses of Egypt and Greece are relevant, dear, and interesting, and we feel good with them. The idols of the 'savages' are related to us. We read the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita, the Torah and the Koran, and other great revelations, as well as the messages of Steiner, Jung, and other mentors. And with the same feeling we examine the huge relief-paintings of Sandjiev. They are good-natured and cheerful, they are interesting and absurd, like the fantasies of a young OBERIU member, collecting on his pages thinking beasts, wise wolves, gods playing their games, and ancient prophets. Live joyfully, think happily and happily, delve into the depths of ideas without malice, without envy, without the heavy burden of exclusivity. Spellbound, gaze upon the 'heraldic,' but at the same time amusing faces and figures, generously adorned with polished colored stones, like the precious attire of Russian icons.

The new European culture and religiosity of a new type appeared, as they say, in the teachings of Francis of Assisi, who taught to pray and think about Divine things joyfully and lightly, for it is not in vain that it is said in the Gospel: "My Burden is Light." It seems that Russian teachers starting with Sergius of Radonezh were proponents of this bright faith. Be that as it may, wherever it came from - before us is the universal responsiveness of the Russian cosmopolitan rooted in his native soil, the Kalmyk native of Siberia, the Moscow intellectual, and the European-significant artist Dmitry Sandjiev.

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