Two Russian Artists Place the Avante-Garde in Nature

America’s skyscrapers and wide-open spaces live up to artists Francisco Infante’s and Nonna Goriunova’s preconceptions of the country, but there isn’t as much advertising here as the Moscow couple expected. “We thought we would be drowning in it,” they joked, shortly after arriving in Los Angeles to participate in a UCLA Extension program called “From Czarism to Perestroika: Russian Art From Its Imperial Roots to Its Soviet Present.”

During their first trip to the United States, Infante and Goriunova will talk about their experimental art in the UCLA Extension class’s final session, which is open to the public at 7 p.m. Wednesday in Room 1220B of Knudsen Hall.

If the couple have a few things to learn about this country, their work is certain to surprise Americans whose knowledge of Soviet contemporary art is limited to painting and sculpture. Infante (whose mother is Spanish) and Goriunova have taken the tradition of the Russian Avant-Garde into a realm of environmental conceptualism.

Infante’s work began in the ‘60s with an interest in geometric abstraction and its philosophical ties to concepts of the cosmos and infinity, then moved on to kinetic art and futuristic systems for “cosmic architecture.” In 1968, the couple began to experiment with “games in nature,” creating spontaneous outdoor works of art in a process akin to American “happenings.”

“We did it for ourselves, but if other people came, that was OK,” Infante said, speaking through an interpreter. “In deference to Malevich, we also devised some Suprematist games, putting constructed objects into the real space of nature and working with the geometry of sunlight.” Taking their cues from the Russian Suprematist movement founded in 1915 by Kasimir Malevich, they set up abstract compositions of man-made forms in nature. The idea, in part, was a playful interchange between the artistic and the natural.

The work of Malevich and other members of the Russian Avant-Garde was largely hidden away until glasnost opened the doors of museum storage closets where long-reviled abstraction had languished. Infante learned about this officially discredited art from postcards received from France in the ‘60s, he said. Later he saw actual examples of the work in the collection of George Costakis, a Greek who worked in Moscow’s diplomatic offices and managed to amass large quantities of Russian Avant-Garde material.

Infante’s and Goriunova’s “games” eventually led to their current work, “Artefacts,” which are photographs of temporary outdoor installations. The elegant pictures capture a moment in a situation that involves fleeting appearances of light, reflected images and objects that move in the wind.

In one series, “The Wandering of the Square,” for example, nature’s horizontal mirrors--such a lakes and frozen water--contrast with man-made vertical mirrors. In one picture, a mirror-covered, square-shaped arch rises out of a frozen pond. A tilted square mirror hovers above a lake in another.

One particularly striking shot records a grove of trees where reflected branches mingle ambiguously with real ones. A series based on clouds features a floating, cloud-shaped mirror that reflects real clouds or the Earth below it. In other photos, mirrors in the snow are almost indistinguishable from actual snow, while those positioned at water’s edge seem to add another dimension to the landscape.

The two artists work together on these projects, which often require transporting unwieldy objects into the countryside and suspending them from trees or other supports, but Infante takes the photographs alone. Making the best of “fortuitous influences” and “unpredictable elements” in nature, he said he seizes the right moment for the picture as it occurs. Results are not always what he expected, but he accepts this as “a condition of life” and enjoys the “enrichment” that chance can provide.

Unlike American artists who might shoot dozens of pictures in a similar circumstance, Infante takes only one of each situation. One reason is that spontaneity is central to the concept. The other is economic: The Agfa film he prefers is expensive and difficult to get in Moscow. Once he has developed the film, however, Infante prints editions of 20 black-and-white prints and five in color.

Both artists make their living as commercial artists, Goriunova by exhibition design, Infante by designing publications. Since glasnost has allowed greater public access to the arts, “we have more opportunities to sell our creative work and we work on our own much more,” Infante said.

Infante and Goriunova, who spent a few days in New York and traveled to Pittsburgh for an exhibition of their work at the International Images gallery before coming to Los Angeles, will show slides of their work at the Wednesday UCLA program, which will include an overview of contemporary Soviet art by John Bowlt, author of “Russian Art of the Avant-Garde” and a USC professor of Slavic languages. Admission to the three-hour event is $14.