Viewfinders

Vladimir Kozin was an active member of the artistic collective New Blockheads. According to critic Ekaterina Degot, “these orderlies of the art world expressed their contempt for didacticism and for the pompousness of the ‘masterpiece.’ They discovered that very ‘modern gaiety’ Breton was seeking. In their demonstration of idiocy as a form of higher wisdom, the New Blockheads were the heirs of Oberiut. It was a unique position in post‑Soviet Petersburg.”

Kozin trained as a sculptor and graduated in 1980 from the Department of Architectural and Decorative Sculpture of Mukhina Higher School of Art and Design. Before joining the group he worked on official commissions—monuments and playgrounds—before turning to contemporary art. He joined the New Blockheads after meeting members of the group at the performance Funeral Feast: The Potato Eaters (June 14, 1996), which took place during the opening of Anatoly Belkin’s exhibition Private Territory at the State Russian Museum. The possibility of transforming everyday life into art—a key theme for the group—has remained central to Kozin’s practice for decades.

Viewfinders first appeared in Vladimir Kozin and Vadim Flyagin’s joint performance Bright Hangover in Shishkin Forest: In Search of the Artist (October 13, 1996, near Vyritsa Station, Leningrad Region). According to Kozin, the viewfinder is a simple device for framing reality. During the performance, the artists used small cardboard frames to locate landscapes resembling those painted by Ivan Shishkin. The observation window was further modified with a horizontal wire—forming a crosshair‑like structure—or small objects such as a bottle cap. This ironic play with “armed vision” referenced modernist experiments with perception and the utopian idea that, by adopting scientific methods, art could predictably alter the viewer’s experience and consciousness. Later, Kozin developed the concepts of the “true” horizon line and the “point of view.” With the help of viewfinders and similar devices, these notions could be materialized and literally placed before the eyes.