A visit to Tastak and Vadim Kazantsev

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  Almaty, Kazakhstan
Saturday, February 3, 2007

Here's something that may interest you. The other day Zhanara and I went to meet this artist whose name is Vadim Kazantsev. We took a tram (street car) to the Tastak bazaar neighborhood. The trams here in Almaty are the best way to travel around town- there isn't a metro as of yet (the subway will be opened to limited service in 2009) and you almost always risk your life taking a ride in a taxi. By the way, this city debatably has some of the most awful driving in the world. I've heard from most of my friends here that most of the drivers licenses are bought or bribed. Anyhow I'll write more on traffic in another blog.

We reached the Tastak neighborhood and Zhanara commented that this neighborhood is called the bedroom of Almaty, because there are a lot of workers who live here who commute to work in the city center. The neighborhood is quite interesting really. There is a large bazaar in the neighborhood. Along with the bazaar there are a lot of small restaurants. The neighborhood seemed like a typical working class one. The kind of neighborhood I like. The buildings are the type that were typically built during the last years of the Soviet Union. Many of the buildings look like "Brutalist" constructions that resemble apartments that were built in the 1970's in the U.S. Unlike the city center, there is very little new construction in this neighborhood, except perhaps for a few apartments blocks. But largely, the neighborhood was built during the 80-90's. Interestingly, there are a lot of buildings that have been augmented to better suit them for commerce.

A perfect lamp

Most of the apartments, by the way, during the soviet union didn't have storefronts. So, many of the stores have been remodeled from ground level apartments. There is a real shortage of business space in this city. I've heard actually, that the ground floor apartments here in Almaty fetch the highest price on the real estate market because they can often be easily converted into business space. These ground level apartments are also more valuable because they aren't very difficult to get to. Often, elevators don't work here as a result of constant power outages, and the top floor apartments are responsible for the roof of the apartments. (i.e. if you get a leak on the roof, it's the top floor apartments, responsibility to fix the leak). There are no effective apartment committees or management groups that really have any responsibility on many of the old apartments. So, many of the apartment buildings infrastructures are falling apart despite the fact that you can fix up your own apartment to look like a mini-mansion. This is actually a popular pastime here, The euro-remont is a status symbol, that implies that your apartment will be more european after you've fixed it up with all the latest conveniences. Some of this this remont work can be quite nice. I've seen some great examples of remont work here that really puts an interesting contrast to what is happening to the decaying buildings on the outside. Regardless, it's all so strange how privatization was so crudely implemented. (Incidentally, the aesthetic of the the euro-remont is what a lot of my paintings are based on.

Boy and Bench

I'm trying to capture the unique take here on the rise of class and the new rich. I am painting pictures of some interesting augmentations that have happened to the apartments that were built to support a worker - Soviet single class - society. Now the buildings have been adapted to reflect the tastes of the new wealth and wider access to building materials.)

We arrived early to meet Vadim. Zhanara and I stopped to look at some used books that were for sale from a street side vendor. None of the books seemed interesting, so we went to stand by the bus stop where we had agreed to meet Vadim. Not long after that, we saw Vadim walking across the street to meet us. Vadim is an artist who we met on the television show we were recently on. He was being interviewed about his paintings on doors. Vadim wanted to show us something, it was a bit of a surprise, and so he would take us someplace to show us his work. We walked and talked along the way, he explained that he lives half of the year here in Almaty, and the other half, he lives with his wife in St. Petersburg. Vadim is around 45 years old, and is an active member of the group of artists, actors, and poets called "Barracuda". They are a loose network of artists who do public art around the city and in the country side in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. After 10 minutes we reached a small school yard, and Vadim explained that he had done some mural work in the mid-1980's to the 1990s for this kindergarten. We were greeted by the security guard who took us to the headmasters office.

Children's Art Tables

After a few minutes we were greeted and shown the mural works all done in glass mosaic. The works are fantastic! I was so surprised to see such great design work. He showed us the work, that took him a total of 2 years during the last years of the Soviet Union. We were led through the school and shown the works that were done all through the building. In the main stairways and communal areas of the school, we observed his large mosaics of various motifs that included Muslim, Russian, and Chinese design themes.

During the early 1990s, things were quite difficult in Almaty and the rest of the Soviet Union. Much of the money that was granted to Vadim and his cooperative of artists was no longer worth much due to the huge inflation levels. Although they were granted the commission to do the mosaics in several kindergartens, the money alloted to them was no longer worth the actual price to purchase the tools and materials to do the job. Fortunately, Vadim had a friend who sponsored the works, and so for two years they worked on this one school despite the fact that the whole city was struggling to make ends meet.

Vadim was trained as an architect, at Kazakhstan Academy Of Architecture. However, he discovered the creative side of him when he reluctantly joined a cooperative that was doing mosaic murals. He says he doesn't really take part in artist circles. I see Vadim as an "outsider artist". Vadim said that during the Soviet period, architect training had allowed more space for creativity and experimentation than traditional art school training.

The kindergarten campus itself was a pretty interesting place too. Kindergartens must be some of the most intact Soviet architecture still left in the city. This is due to the fact that little money has gone into the schools. Much of the furniture is still Soviet fabricated. A lot of this furniture( i.e. desks, chairs, benches, light fixtures) is quite interesting from a design perspective. The furniture items are great examples of constructivist (Soviet Modernism) design. Ironically, many of these pieces of furniture would not be out of place in a European or American designer furniture store. The kind of stores where you can pick up a replica of a 60's Charles Eames chair for a thousand dollars. I can imagine a lot of this stuff being on the shelves of IKEA. The public schools are great examples of high design during the Soviet era. Color psychology is often utilized, thus creating a very interesting, if not really "cool" looking, well-designed spaces. A great design aspect is attention to the scale of children. Windows are low but large, giving the much needed light for children.

I really enjoyed walking through the school and getting a master class lesson on the art work by Vadim Kazantsev.

I took a lot of photos this day - I posted some of the best photos of Vadim's mosaic work and the kindergarten design. Let me know if you want me to send more photos.

Daniel

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Children's Chairs

One of Vadim's Mosaic's

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