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A Russian land-artist creates large-scale art objects in a rural area with the help of young locals. Nikolay Polissky and his fellow artists are gaining international attention for their larger-than-life artistic statements.
A huge wooden lighthouse near a river, a giant beehive tower in the middle of a Russian field and a big iron bird in the woods - all of these objects which amaze locals and passers-by in a Russian provincial village were built by artists some 186 miles away from Moscow.
Russian architect Vasily Schetinin came to the Nikola-Lenivets village in Russia's Kaluga region at the end of the 1980s with an idea to build a home for artists where they could live and create their objects using natural landscape.
Schetinin settled in the village and one by one his friends - artists, architects and designers - moved to Nikola-Lenivets in search of a quiet getaway from the hardships and rush of modern city life.
One of them, Nikolay Polissky, who moved to the village in 2000, decided to quit painting and become a landscape artist.
His first project was 220 snowmen placed in various parts of the village, which he made with the help of local residents.
[Nikolay Polissky, Artist]:
"I have been painting for about ten years, before the year 2000. But then I decided I want to do something using real space. The first (art objects) were the Snowmen. Local people helped me to build them and I understood that there are huge resources here. They are absolutely free and the land is free - nobody cared much about the land back then."
In ten years the artists have built dozens of constructions and have turned the majority of Nikola-Lenivets residents into a creative community.
[Nikolay Polissky, Artist]:
"There are not many places, actually I think this is the only place where village people help the artist professionally, where they are involved in art understanding that they are actually making art. They go to Venetian Biennale with me, to the Luxembourg Museum of Contemporary Art, to Paris and we have just returned from Milan."
Since 2000 Polissky has participated in a number of art exhibitions around the world and made it to the short-lists of several prestigious art prizes, like the Kandinsky prize in 2009.
Starting from 2003 he organized the annual "ArchStoyanie" landscape art festival in Nikola-Lenivets, with Russian and foreign artists taking part, which attracts hundreds of people each year.
With wooden installations featuring unearthly creatures Polissky's strange land became a sort of Utopia for artists and local citizens.
[Alexey Gusev, Polissky's Assistant]:
"I have been here for about five years. After serving in the army I worked in a different place at first, and then came here, to my homeland. My friends worked here (with Polissky) and I came here too to chat and to see what they were doing. I stayed for a couple of days, then started making something myself and I liked it. So I stayed."
Polissky's projects not only provided jobs to people in Nikola-Lenivets and nearby villages, but also gave them an opportunity to express themselves in art - a rare, if not unique occasion for the Russian province.
[Dmitry Mozgunov, Polissky's Assistant]:
"Most of all I like that each day is not the same as others, there is always something new, new ideas, so the mind does not stop at one thing, it (this work) broadens your mind."
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World's Largest Land Art Projectby NTDTV469 views
Nice place.
I want to go there !
Thanks for sharing !
15joey04 6 months ago
cool
Volf99 6 months ago
this sounds like a great place to be... thanks for posting :)
MrBuckwilliam 6 months ago