Elena Uporova
NOTES OF THE TREATING DOCTOR

As the patient asserts, the phenomenon of the concept "plast-modern" takes place in front of a cup of coffee. As the aroma of this drink accelerates palpitation, the Muse appears. Playing with a file in thin work- weary hands, she responsibly declares, that henceforth all this, exactly a trunk tunnel, which D.C. Pokrovsky must open, will have the official name "plast-modern". It is well known that it is useless to argue with this lady when she has been stupefied by the Brazilian drug. Therefore this clumsy word collocation has been adopted in the consciousness of D.C. and has become a kind of persuasive idea.
NB: To look it up in the dictionary, what does it mean: "modern", plast - plastic, plast.
D.C.: You see, I really twirl all works from plast. I roll out from plane.
Probably, if nature has permitted to metal to grow, to reach up to the sun and to give back seeds to the wind, then "plast-modern" has become only a photo, a herbarium, snag, splinter of ancient pitch. And in the identification card of D.C. Pokrovsky would be written: occupation - botanist. But I'm talking about other science, about mathematics. To ravel on one of D.C.'s works is the same as to saunter on a Moebius ring. What is "downwards", what "up"? Where is it - behind, beside? Only an infinitive break of space. Plastic withdrawing aside. From what?
D.C.: What moment of working supplies the greatest pleasure? The last. When I fasten it to the support. Fasten - and stop. And then the work does not interest me any more. It has now its own life.
So, it means not a point but dots. Works live their own lives. Where is the guarantee, that the copper Venus of Merimee will not bend a finger? I easily present to myself the fate of any mad patron of art who has risked to obtain at once some works by Pokrovsky. He buys them and says, "Let it be, there will be chess". Oh, it would be strange chess. The figures instead of making the usual moves on squares overflow one into each other, creep through bronze slots and holes, leaving on the board pieces of metal, which re-incorporate into strange deceptive forms. It would be a long, very long game, not clearly in black-and-white, in which the king also is indistinguishable from the pawn, and one struggling side indistinguishable from the other. Model, satisfying the philosopher, but not poet. If suddenly the owner takes it in his head to give to figures a value of language - dancing men of Conan Dole - he will become a prisoner of this language, one of its signs... Why do figures take of the names from the author? Why is it so difficult to pick up words - why is it easier to use the digit, the quantitative set? Not therefore whether, what, figure too strong signs, and new sign will only complicate decryption?
Recommendation of the doctor: Do not place more than four works of D.C. in interior.
Although not realising it, but by feeling this sign of plast-modern, the owner will transform his collection in shop of antiquities or assembly of heathen gods and Christian apostles. Series of cardinals always gives rise to question: why not orthodoxy? Why Bird's Cardinal and Catholic cross in the field of soul? About national. "Diy" with scattered hands, crucified between Heathenism and Christianity, is the stone (turn on the left... turn to the right... straightway...) and cross, to which all three roads (again Moebius?) point. Diy - the tragical figure, martyred and very national, though it appeared in reply to discourse, declared by Italians, "Metaphors in Dante's Purgatory". And word itself Italian: "Diy" - Supreme god. Primitive nationalism can create something like "Bird's Cardinal has gone to the bazaar". This religious art derives from Francisco from Assisi, preaching to birds (however, he was not a cardinal). Cardinal in general is a traditional character. It's hard to find a melodrama without the person in red. As against Diy (the spiritual way) cardinal is almost always the problem of choice on the level of vanity. A temptation of human flesh, human soul. It is curious, that "Bird's Cardinal" - one of those rare names, which was given by the artist at once.
Attention to the personal psychoanalyst of patient
D.C.: That puts me, it, probably, sound. When I work, I listen to music. And I need nothing. Only sound. It winds me and then it happens very difficulty to leave from this state...
If I had the right, I have named that long and uneven Sound. Or Note. Or even more definitely: A. But someone already has guessed in it an instant. Sound always is close to mathematics and art, but rare is the artist who manages it to fix that point... On what this gift depends it is not known. Some works of D.C. are dumb, others are simply sound, but there are also those which represent a sound. And, maybe, this is the main thing. Because sound, as well as line - and coffee - has the ability to slip off, to escape from the coffee-pot. If I had the right, and the money, I would order D.C. a tuning fork...
Diagnosis: plast-modern is not a complication of postmodernism, and does not carry any epidemiological character, not transferred by usual paths.
Contra-indications: Don't drink coffee in great quantity!
On materials of magazine "Dirigible" ¹ 4

Yuri Volkogonov
THE SYNTHETIC ART OF DMITRY POKROVSKY

Dmitry Pokrovsky found his place in life relatively early. At the age of eleven to the surprise of his parents he began attending art school and two years later decided that art would become his profession. From that moment, long before he graduated from school, the future sculptor began working to get into the Stroganovka Academy (Moscow Higher Industrial Art School). After he graduated from Stroganovka, where he specialised in "artistic metal work", Dmitry began searching for his own genre. Over a very short period, he tried everything in the book, from painting and graphic art to ceramics and design. But, believing himself to be a "paper" artist, Dmitry searched for something more fundamental and finally turned to sculpture. In 1990 Dmitry was invited to take part in biennale in Ravenna (Italy) and Dmitry was ready to work in bronze.
In the same year, he won a competition to create a sculpture group in the town of Vyshny Volochek in memory of the town residents who were killed in the Great Patriotic War. While working on the competition composition, Dmitry found lines and forms that he later embodied in his "Cardinals" series. I hope that exquisite noble language of the "Cardinals" will also be used in the future works of this talented sculptor.
Dmitry Pokrovsky evolved as a sculptor under the influence of such artists as Mstislav Dobuzhinsky and Vladimir Favorsky. However, the direction in which Dmitry has been working in recent years can be described as a synthesis of two principles, figurative expressionism and Russian fantastic realism. I think this exhibition will give viewers the opportunity to feel the scope of this young, but already mature artist's talent.

Elena Chernova
ARTIST ALWAYS SINGLETON

Only gallerists and an as-yet- narrow circle of critics know sculptor Dmitri Pokrovsky. But relations between art and the broad masses are generally complex, and besides, seem now to be rather out of season. But however narrow "the circle of these revolutionaries" - those professionally engaged in art - is at present, to talk to them is always interesting. Though, certainly, we speak not only about a trade.
- When two years ago in the Central House of Artist in Moscow I became acquainted with the concept of "Art-ark", I remember, I was struck, - tells Dmitri - it was a hungry time, everyone has problems, and here - Space. But that has made a still greater impression - guys, I guessed, soon will carry out their fantastic projects.
Moscow sculptor Dmitri Pokrovsky does not hide tenderness to Nizhniy Novgorod and friends from there. He shares his time between Moscow and Nizhniy. As well as many others, steadfastly watches, where to the "Ark of arts" - child of Nizhniy-Moscow from the beginning and international now - turns on.
- I am convinced, that there is a special concentration of talented people in Nizhniy. May be it's the reason why people from other cities long to Nizhniy. There can be a special radiation? You see, we really do not know, that occurs with junction of two powerful rivers, who swallows whom there, that energy is freed by it... In general I am concern now with the problem: that occurs with junction of different streams, such an existential questions...
Dmitri works in the genre "plast-modern". Well, if there is, certainly, such a genre. In literary-art almanac "Dirigible" ¹ 4, which presentation recently has passed in Nizhniy Novgorod and Moscow, sculptor Dmitri Pokrovsky is presented as the founder of plast-modern. Poured, fluid figures - still streaming, but already figure. It's hardly from space. Correctly Dmitri speaks "I… roll out from plane". The fine plastic of Dmitri Pokrovsky, not accidentally, has appeared in "Dirigible", as well as, not accidental, our talk about "Ark". This free associative movement from form to form, space games - all this is close to the self-sensation of the people, which have set off in slow and absolutely free navigation - whether in jets of ether, in different coloured water... By the way, in the last number of "Dirigible" this relationship is fixed also in the figure of Vasili Bandakov from the series "Ark". But we shall return to Dmitri, to his Diys, Bird's Cardinals, to an Instant... Any names can be given to the works. One more condition of free flight.
- You speak: I think now of carved streams, about emptiness, about holes. You already tried to make something on this theme? As it will be! Or I am in a hurry, setting that question?
- I do not know, how it will be. Look, what link is there between shadows and bronze moulding? But I try to engage in it. And how will it be? Art is such a thing... You are a man; you should build something on Earth. It is simple. Here as the woman should give rise, like this. Something is added in the world. From emptiness. Like emptiness... And I am in general an artisan-person; I like to touch, to create by hand. When it is possible to touch, to perceive - it is made. Words, you see, can be wounds. I recently have been in Mitki-group - not that. Is felt, that this ball is all over, is exhausted...
- There can be, it just weariness from a role? Remember that Vasili Bandakov spoke about it. Constantly one needs to support this image, to play all the time...
- There can be, really, it's a point. But sensation - yes, dawn. Autumn.
- It is not the same for you in Nizhniy?
- I hope, you understand that matter, not in courtesy to the visitor. I am simply in love with Nizhniy Novgorod inventions. As well as in the city. I can for hours; it seems, to speak about "Dirigible", about that I have seen in "Ark". My small hymn to "Dirigible" is a hymn to the natural course of things. Nothing is done specially, affectedly. The company - poets, artists, architects - moves slowly. Who wants, connects, and simply passes... In Moscow - loneliness. Well, it should be so... And then, in Moscow there are big distances, you know.
- Up to Nizhniy it appears closer!
- It appears! Know, while I studied, I travelled to exhibitions in St. Petersburg: one night - and there. And do you know who has opened Nizhniy for me?
- Who?
- Alexey Stepakov, I studied together with him in Stroganovka. Now he teaches there, got a chair... He brought me on November 7. At four o'clock a.m. we were fed with some delicacies and then I became acquainted with his brother. It in general Khulibin! He has a hothouse that opens by itself... So for me this was beginning of Nizhniy Novgorod. Now, do not look at me so, I understand all: the city has problems - dirt, criminality, prices, all is clear. But there is something more... I have found out it from the other side. Like a door has opened, and behind it... another dimension. The people, I already spoke of. Here I got acquainted with Boris Pavlovich Kalashnikov. Very interesting person. He is the director of "Poljana" corporation and gallerist of Nizhniy Novgorod fair. He popularises fine plastic, including mine. Market... Everything is good - one bad, hard to sell! It is a pity. To perception of plane already are more or less ready, plastic do not perceive yet.
- But are you still ready to come?
- It is interesting to me.
1994.