Icon of the New Academism

Vladimir Kozin is an artist whose multifaceted practice encompasses sculpture, object‑making, installation, performance, photography, collage, and the artist’s book. Grounded in the postmodernist appropriation strategy, his work reconsiders—through ironic quotation of canonical works, from Ilya Repin and Kazimir Malevich to Vincent van Gogh and Marcel Duchamp—not only the history of art but also its social and ideological implications. He favors so‑called “poor” materials, such as car rubber, scrap metal, and found everyday objects.

In 1996, Kozin became a member of the St. Petersburg–based group The New Blockheads, for whom “blockheadedness” was a deliberate aesthetic and ethical stance, directed in part against the intellectual pathos of the New Academy of Fine Arts. This work is dedicated to its founder, Timur Novikov: Kozin witnessed how the blind leader of the neo‑academists would “view” an exhibition by relying solely on a friend’s verbal descriptions. This situation prompted the artist to reflect on how a blind person might perceive art—through touch, memory, and cultural associations. New Blockheads member Vadim Flyagin, experimented with paper for Braille writing and printing, which drew Kozin’s interest as well. He began working with relief surfaces, seeking to create an image accessible through senses other than sight. The artist initially attempted to press the image into the surface with a nail, but, dissatisfied with the result, he turned to repoussé on thin sheet metal, choosing as a universal symbol for the Icon of the New Academism the silhouette of the Mona Lisa—one of the most iconic images of Western European art.