Steel and tenderness

Writing about sculpting is quite strange for me, even though I have done a bit of it myself. My home movie collection has been linked to sculpture for a long time. Suffice it to mention Ivan Kavaleridze who came to cinema from sculpture and brought a lot with him, or Oleksandr Antypenko who obviously influenced Dovzhenko not only as an artist, but also as a film director. The plainness of the screen and its depth really excite certain associations with sculpture.

“My characters need contact with the earth, with the sacral stone,” says the sculptor Ruslan Naida. It isn’t surprising that sculptures like ‘posing’ on the natural background and aspire to fit into the animate and unshaped space. But what does ‘unshaped’ mean? The steppe becomes mythically epic and multidimensional as soon as Ruslan’s sculptures appear in it. Moreover, the sculptor likes metal the most… At least that can be seen in his new collection.

The leading idea of this collection is the eternity of the sacral art, the indisputable magic of the steppe metals, and the synthesis of the alloys of the ancient metal with granite of the Dnipro rapids… destined to understand and to feel, to find a new path to the old barrow. And as a film critic, I find cinematographic associations again: Zvenyhora by Dovzhenko or the first films by Kavaleridze, his sculptures and him as a sculpture. Naida is seeking a one-to-one conversation with the Predecessor who embodies the idea of a live conversation with the past. Wise people call it a post-modern interpretation… I don’t know if it’s true but it looks like the way to the sources of civilization.

The new works are mostly mol-ded, they are images of ancient heroes, women-warriors and dragon fighters, singers and various deities. The steel and its alloys are the modern material, but the roots are in the sacral stone which is a work of art itself. That’s what the sculptor says, and he apparently likes interpreting his works.

Form is especially important for any sculptor. That is why it’s absolutely natural that Naida’s sculptures look as if they stiffened at the moment of greatest tension, at the moment of calm before the storm, before the jump or before an action… The moment of quiet, followed by an explosion. To some extent, this vision animates the metal.

The sculpture’s style doesn’t pretend to be of some other time, but ours. However, they also offer the format of epic timelessness. Or, to put it in simpler form, they suggest to us, the audience, to choose a point of view that would help us to feel the scale of civilization’s history, which is eternal and therefore natural.

Using steel and stone, two materials belonging to such different epoques, Naida combines the periods of prehistoric and modern art and makes his leap into the past, where time doesn’t exist, only feeling. “Feeling is the only mark of time for me,” says the sculptor.

There’s also basalt. Why is basalt used so often in the sculptor’s last works? Why does this frozen lava (that is harder that the granite!) seem so attractive for him?

“Basalt (as well as steel) is formed as a consequence of high-temperature melting and goes through a certain stage of ‘purification’ by fire, which unites the two materials into a spiritual whole. It turns out that basalt in my outdoor installations has helped realize the idea of synthesis of the initial earth’s crust and the polished surfaces of our everyday life that are omnipresent… The idea of the raw and shaped stone that unites The Days of the dragons who spouted out fire and the time of the museum parquets and mowed lawns… Thus having appeared and merged with the characters of my park works, basalt was transferred to the smaller interior compositions. However, in fact all of my sculptures, the smaller ones and the bigger ones, need contact with earth, they long for the earth,” admits the artist. Once again he mentions the gravity of sculptures that have hardened, although it is he who has set their movement and their energetic curve…

His love for frozen lava and steel may also be the manifestation of the artist’s dualistic nature, of his attraction to both raw and primeval, to the figurative images of modern abstraction.

“My imaginary Dnipro rapids consist of breaks, chips, forms, holes, curves, cavities and conglomerations. This is how they live in my imagination. To realize the idea of eternal rapids, I prefer basalt of late. I wish I could use granites, but they are so hackneyed by social realism monuments and architecture, that I see them only in this light…” says Naida.

The choice of the themes is crucial for any artist. Naida’s creative works are filled with the symbolic, eternal and epic images of the Great Steppe. The Predecessor-demiurge, the Men-fighters and Women-fighters, foot and mounted, the steppe world of the amazons and Cimmerian and Sarmatian Goddesses. The mythical figures are peering at space, growing from the most ancient stone circle-cromlech. In his works the sculptor is searching for the spirit of the heroes and pioneers, for the images in the depth of history, and brightly interprets them.

The Riding Amazonian, The Warrior and the Wood Snakes, The Rogue Horse or the Spring Gallop — in all of these sculptures the moment of greatest tension of the people’s and horses’ muscles, the moment of flight, leap and impulse is embodied. The moments when the bodies and the weapons are bent beyond possible, when it’s impossible to bend more or to move more, are recreated. It provokes a feeling that they will start moving in the opposite direction.

The anatomic form is almost broken in the works The Amazonian with the Spears and Two Goddess of the Universe. The forms are destroyed and the volumes, usual for our imagination, disappear. Volume melts away in these sculptures, it vanishes into space like the haze in the steppe. That is why the audience has to steer their imagination.

If you touch the works with your hands, look into the sculptures’ eyes, you will understand that time is just an illusion. What matters is what we are today. We are made from metal, too, and we originate from this prehistoric steppe and time.

The barrow in the open steppe and the high right bank of the river Dnipro are Naida’s favorite galleries. There, where formerly the Scythians’, Cimmerians’ and Polovtsians’ sculptures rose. There, where their presence still can be felt. This is what the mystic power of three-dimensional art is: if the sculptures are taken away from the space, the space is left not desert but deserted.

“This is my real anchor in the rapid life waters,” states the sculptor and descends the hill riding horseback, having just finished his new installation in his favorite gallery on the high Dnipro slope in the Cossacks’ settlement. This one is The Father-Warrior and his Three Sons: the amazing interlaced figures, the interlaced souls, the moment of real love and calm, the moment of complete understanding.

Some sculptors stuff sharks and dismember cows to shock and attract an audience. Some search for form, like Arkhypenko, who admitted that his famous counter form is rooted in Trypillia. Some, and Naida is among them, want to see their art as a sacral one. Just like his great predecessors, not only the sculptors, but also cinematographers or writers.

The sculptor came to his present ideas not by touch. The studies of history helped him understand a simple thing: legends and myths, their great and fearless heroes have always helped society to find its own personal history in a permanently changing life. The steppe sculptures embodied these legends in the form of an unbreakable symbol, merged with the landscape. And again I find here a cinematographic trace: the need for the depth of the sculpture’s ‘frame.’

Ruslan Naida also aspires to this. There, where formerly the Scythians’ idols rose, the chimerical steel forms grow from the sacred stone of the Dnipro rapids and strike root in the grey and yellow amphitheater of the barrow. It’s spectacular. It’s beautiful. I’d like to live, feel and think with this energy.