The energy that emanates from the giant, living sculptures of the Russian artist invades space and time, playing with dimensions, movement, and the geometry of forms.
Roman Ermakov is one of the most prominent new figures on the modern art scene in Russia. The thirty-seven-year-old artist, who graduated from the Moscow State University of Civil Engineering as an engineer-architect, has been creating urban installations, performances, and living sculptures for nearly fifteen years. His approach is to propose vibrant designs for the development of public art in the heart of his native city. While his large-scale, geometrically shaped creations represent fifth-dimensional beings, his “living sculptures” combine fashion and art and offer a real and unusual dynamic, depending on the people wearing the costumes. Some are photographed in a dark room with ultraviolet light, others are placed in the paper sets of an underwater world. Roman Ermakov‘s work combines various artistic techniques, linking art and music, color and light, form and movement, body and sculpture, to better enter a new reality.
Architectural harmony
Interacting with the subconscious and the materialization of internal emotional images in external material forms is, thus, the theme he has been exploring since the beginning of his career. “A human being takes an important place in my work,” explains the Moscow-based artist. “The observation of sculpture in motion in space opens up new opportunities for composition. The series ‘Living Sculptures’ is a reflection of the world of my emotions and sensations. Striving for architectural harmony, I build the energetic bodies and each of them is the embodiment of my countless forms.” His performative creations thus function as a total installation. For him, public art is an “artistic statement in an urban environment,” where aesthetics, harmony, and quality of production go hand in hand. His work extends to wood sculptures and the world of theater and film, while participating in exhibitions and art festivals around the world. Eventually, his goal is to install his public artworks in an urban environment designed by himself as an architect.
Nathalie Dassa
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