In "There Lived a Singing Blackbird" (1971), an early Otar Iosseliani motion picture, the young protagonist played kettledrums in an opera house orchestra. His job was to strike the instrument a single time every evening. He spent the rest of his life bustling about, visiting people, going to useless meetings, drinking with friends, helping acquaintances and strangers. He never managed to create "anything musical," though a melody was sounding in his head. He died an absurd death. However, everyone loved him and mourned him. All encyclopedic entries about this movie agree that this talented man doomed himself to senseless vanity and wasted his life on trifle matters. I guess some "sixties" interpretations also exist, focusing on the impossibility of creative work in reactionary post-thaw times. As for myself, I even cried a bit after watching the movie because it seemed so profoundly sad. An innocent freshman, I found the film highly relevant. "Why, it is time to stop frolicking and stun myself with the library while some creative ideas are still swirling in my head." I didn't mind the character's "lack of productivity," though. Iosseliani's take on the inside of the orchestra pit was terrific. It made me think of sublime things, like Pushkin's lines about the poet, immersed in the vain business of life until Apollo calls him to a holy sacrifice. "Well, -- I thought -- carefree as he is, the guy still dutifully comes to strike his kettledrums at the first demand. He knows what the solemn and the sacred are. Isn't this a sacrifice? What else do you need? No, Ioseliani is not that simple." Today I realize that the movie was even more sophisticated. It conveys the post-thaw political chill and an extraordinary idea of the Apollonian as a blend of high drama and parody. It also shows how seemingly pointless life can all of a sudden turn into a piece of existential art. At the same time, lofty things like a sacrifice or the sound of kettledrums may seem routine and pathetic. What is my point?

I would like to tap the associative potential of the old film in connection to the artist Boris Kocheishvili. I'm not talking about any straightforward analogies. Kocheishvili is an artist who has lived a long and productive life, and his works can fill more than one museum hall. His portfolio includes major exhibitions and reviews by leading critics such as Yuri Gerchuk, Yuri Molok and Valery Turchin. Yet his life and behavior patterns do evoke the image of the hapless and easy-going kettledrums player. His works feature articulate lightness and seldom focus on the mundane. He seems incapable of elevating a creative utterance to the status of a concept appreciated by the transnational art establishment. He doesn't care to deliver his message to the right eyes and ears and secure a place in the artistic hierarchy. Moreover, it appears that he cherishes the sheer fun of creative work more than the message it carries.

The behavior pattern in this context is fundamentally important because it is directly reflected in Kocheishvili's art that appears to undermine the conventional status of the lofty (cf. Iosseliani's kettledrums connotations).

Kocheishvili’s creative method and attitude towards life and art tend to destroy the stereotypical "solemn" and "perfect." He once gave a playful clue to the viewer trying to understand his art:

My dears
I have no time
It's summer
Weeding
My chicken, my ducks, and my cattle
pestering me
Otherwise, I'd have painted whatever
"Hunters in the Snow"
"Black Square"
Or "Danaë".

Dodging the service for any noble social, philosophical, or discursive causes, utter neglect for any "career," all kinds of hobbies and distractions, zigzagging, "hiding steps," and turning all these private and irrelevant things into art. What a beautifully non-systemic attitude!

Kocheishvili has been taking part in exhibitions since the mid-1960s and spent the next decade diligently studying at the Nivinsky Experimental Studio, "at Teis's place," as they used to say at the time. E.S. Teis, a figure that appears to be almost forgotten today, was not only a guardian of the art print culture. He also had – and was happy to share -- a very modern idea of the medium. Take etching, a technique of choice for thematic prints. Teis was hardly interested in the thoughtless use of this medium. He believed the esthetic impact of a print depended on the lingering effect of each stage of its manufacturing, i.e., drawing, etching, and printing. Each presumably has its individual, non-mimetic, almost "abstract" content rooted in stroke masses, textural properties revealed by etching, and more. This "anatomy" of the print seems to be necessary to Kocheishvili: he appreciates a certain unpredictability of etching as a technique not fully tamed, the ambivalence of black and white (the image scratched through the lacquer layer is originally lighter and "whiter" than the background, but once treated with acid and covered with paint it produces a black print), and the general step-by-step process of making a print. Kocheishvili asserted himself as an independent master primarily through his unique large drawings in India ink made with a brush. However, the etching experience, the "one-etching show" with all the dramatic development and culmination of the visual action and the mystery revealed at the very end, I think, has had a significant impact on his poetics.

In the mid-1970s, Kocheishvili started exhibiting his Indian ink drawings on coated paper. Some were (so to say) depictive, others (so to say) had a plot, but that's not the whole story. A typical work from the former group, "A Sculpture" (1976), shows a complex artifact that evokes few anthropomorphic or biomorphic associations at first glance. We see two bizarre and mysterious objects (probably some life forms) growing from (or just rooted in) the ground. The objects (bodies) and the soil are drawn using the same technique and seem to have the same texture. Brush painting, in this case, has clearly been affected by the etching experience: the black and the white are ambivalent; they permeate each other in silhouettes and textures. The brushstroke suggests tiny gaps (or hints at gaps), the memory of the etching scratch stroke. Once the viewer concentrates on biomorphic and anthropomorphic associations, even a plot seems to emerge (an Amazon with a shield standing next to a tree). However, the mimetic content is still ready to give way to the metaphysical one.

The second group relies on playing and acting, as in a mime theatre. Yuri Molok once wrote about the tradition of depicting clowns and mimes that started with Toulouse-Lautrec. Kocheishvili values the gesture, but he has also mastered the language of arresting it and converting it to a symbol ("A Conversation with a Queen," "Women and Owls"). And the theatrical aspect is not merely fictional. It has its own roots in the ancient theater world and in Soviet "communal" urban culture.

Thus, since the mid-1970s, two fundamental aspects of Kocheishvili's poetics became apparent: the metaphysical and the theatrical. Does it have any links with the problems of his generation that followed the 1960s? The Sixties are associated with the "Severe Style", the last attempt to represent the actual life of society in Soviet art. The Sixtiers no longer harbored any progressive illusions and were keenly aware of the stagnant times they were destined to live and work in. Hence the trend towards the theatrical that affected many masters of the generation such as Natalia Nesterova, Olga Bulgakova, or Aleksandre Sitnikov. These were painters; on the whole, this trend extended to a variety of genres, specifically decorative and monumental art.

Few artists at that time could interpret this theatricalization as a kind of escapism, a move away from a reality that had lost its historical content. The Seventiers probably include older conceptualists never analyzed in this context, such as Ilya Kabakov and Viktor Pivovarov. Kocheishvili's theatricalization shares some philosophy typical of the entire generation. In the narrative of general dissatisfaction with the available reality (Erik Bulatov), the artist finds his own distinct style. First, he relies heavily on plastic art techniques. Secondly, Kocheishvili creates a proprietary cast of typical characters. Though some of them may have a name ("Painter Larisa Pastushkova" or "Olya and Natasha"), most are more general. In some cases, the artist endows them with signs of power or femininity ("A Conversation with a Queen"). There is a woman making her point and a woman listening, women talking as equals, a romantic man, a playboy, an artist, and more. Kocheishvili's favorite images of birds also seem like characters; in other words, they often act as messengers in his theatre. Finally, this theater also features hidden references to artistic images that have influenced the author, expressed as plastic accents. Kocheishvili creates a world of complex semiotic interaction through gestures, facial expressions, and poses. At the same time, the meaning of any scene appears to be well beyond outsider's perception: the artist consciously reserves the right not to decipher what is behind the pantomime - a dispute about truth or a disagreement on the recipe of a gastronomic treat. Philologist Aleksandre Zholkovsky aptly defined Fazil Iskander's prose as "a theatre of skillful signaling." Kocheishvili knows how to turn a gesture into a veritable signal ("Gestures"). Yet, he has also gradually mastered the language of omissions, pauses, and freezing time flow. In "Three Sisters" and "Catching Birds," the language of spatial caesuras needs no gestural support.

"Names" is a series dating back to the 1990s. On the surface it may remind one of conceptualism since you see texts (Russian names, male and female) woven into the pictorial fabric. This fabric, the setting of "Kocheishvili's Theater," evokes real-life architectural prototypes such as Russian provincial estates and churches. Russian names Olya, Yegor, Liza, and Mitya are inscribed on the chapels, porticos, and verandas that have been transformed by the author's imagination yet have not lost touch with architectural reality. However, in contrast to Kabakov's classic "complete list of eligible persons," these names carry no ideological connotations. Even the artistic technique of drawing is at odds with the textuality of conceptualism that demands reduction, anonymity, and the use of "ready-made" images. The handwriting is unique and correlates with architectural forms (rhyming roundness, the echoing of rhythms and voids). But even the overlap between the architecture of the drawn font and the architecture transformed by the artist's imagination is not the main semantic charge of the series. While the names in the "communal" albums and paintings appeal to ideology, those in Kocheishvili's works appeal to acoustics. They echo in the colonnades and pylons of time-worn provincial architecture. The long sound of all these rounded "o "s and "a "s signifies human presence, a trace of private life rather than any ideology.

Gradually, what we call the set in Kocheishvili's theatre, i.e., all sorts of background objects, takes on an increasingly independent role. These objects don't just organize the drama; they begin to solo. I believe he first came up with this statement in a series of pen-and-ink drawings entitled A Gate, A Cliff, A Gatehouse, and so on in the 1980s. These are motifs of architectural origin, based on memories of the volumetric elements of the order and on historical ornaments. However, the graphic presentation is purely authorial. The drawing process itself encapsulates the energy of effort to overcome resistance. Perhaps this is the echo of the etching experience, where a line results from successive stages of scratching, etching, filling a recess with color, and printing from a metal plate. All this makes the linearity particularly well-grounded. The precision and certainty act as a restraining factor to counterbalance improvisation and unpredictability of a keen hand that is eager to overcome the domination of objects and to surpass the visible reality.

This fragile balance is also revealed in plastics: as classic architectural archetypes are distorted by the elements of nature, they become illogical almost to the point of decay. Nevertheless, these bent, brittle, and twisted architectural shapes – actual ruins, remain steady. It is not tectonics that "holds" the image together, but rather the metaphysical resource of the white colour: the whiteness of the paper that shines through drawn lines and crawls into the numerous arches, windows, and apertures.

In the works of the 1990s, the world of objects represented by bushes, bosquets, gazebos, park vases, ruins, gates, and towers gains an even greater power. These objects begin to replace the characters' pantomime with mimics and gestures of their own. Moreover, they act as agents of destiny, determining the characters' vitality and even gender identity ("The Masculine and the Feminine"). They are not “the predatory things of the century": these objects display no aggression or threat. It's just that the world of objects (the former scenery) has taken over the symbolic right to determine the boundaries of existence. The river, a white strip of untouched coated paper looks literally like a border between the two shores of existence in the work “By the river”. It is not so much about life and death but rather about the earthly and the heavenly, the material and the spiritual, and, finally, about the reality and the artistic dream. According to Pavel Florensky, dreams separate the visible world from the invisible one and, being incarnated, are identical to art in a metaphysical sense. In "Anna drawing", the figure of the somnambulant detached female artist is fleshless and mystic: the dream of creation equates her in celestial rank with actual angels ("Angels and Crosses"). In "A Nude," the mirror does not reflect the naked body: it is a funnel into the other world. The viewer witnesses a confrontation between the flesh and its dematerialization.

In the 2000s, Kocheishvili turns to painting more often. The metaphysical flavour is even more evident in these works. The landscape (which is natural according to the titles "A Field", "A Sunny Edge of the Forest", "A Trail") is shaped by architectural motifs (baroque volutes and curls, ruins of colonnades and fragments of entablatures). It seems that "pristine nature" simply does not exist for the artist: it is thoroughly rethought and imbued with artistic, theatrical, and architectural reminiscences. This sophisticated landscape becomes an ideal stage for playing some plotless internal drama of movement, rhythm and optics. Nevertheless, the plots suggested by the artist are hardly abstract. His paintings always have a figurative background. "The Forest" glorifies the idea of a rhythmic structure cleared of any naturalistic associations. Yet there is also a dramatic, theatrical effect of isolation: the angle of the "stage" itself slides into the "curtain" but does not pierce it. Is it to illustrate despair? And in "A Forest Trail," a grove (with obvious reminiscences of ruined colonnades) seems to be lifted on a stage. The podium cuts into it and goes backstage. Is it an exit? Or an exodus?

Kocheishvili acutely feels the dialectics of the "on-stage" and the "natural", “organic”. It often becomes the underlying subject of his works. In "Flying away" and "A Door to the Forest," the artistic action unfolds in a specially designed theatrical environment. This action is certainly far from imitating nature: rather, it's an exercise in stretching hues and colors or studying luminosity. It looks like the artist builds on Matyushin's experiments in color organics by creating "viewing states" horizontally, vertically, from the center, and along two perpendiculars.

Kocheishvili's multilayered imagery is a subject to multiple interpretations. The artist tends to avoid guiding the viewer's reactions and shuns providential exaltation openly ridiculed by young conceptualists in the Dictionary of Terms of the Moscow Conceptual School. This is why he emphasizes theatrical elements in his works and never tires of reminding us of his personal philosophy: this is my very own theater, the theater of my own life, my own consciousness. "A Design of a House" is a good illustration of this idea: it's a structure standing next to the River of Life that consists of objects with iconic connotations destroyed and broken by time, i.e., columns with dilapidated fragments of entablatures, swirling decorations, glass windows, and so on. Nevertheless, it seems that the passage of time and laws of nature do not bother the artist: he simply designs a house according to his own taste from his favorite materials. It may be crooked, wobbly, windblown, and ready to collapse into the river at any moment - but this is precisely a nest where the artist can dwell. It is not that the artist avoids burdening himself or the viewer with insoluble existential problems. The only thing that he is certain about is the ownership of his home, his theatre that he can't possibly betray. In this world he is free to change the scale as he pleases (kitchenware in "Women and Dishes" or "A Picnic" may be as large as human figures), change the speed of time ("A Beach near Lyme Regis," "A Lead River"), or bring the terrestrial and the celestial together on the same road ("A Walk with Angels").

Obviously, the artist turned to reliefs in the context of the same dialectic of materialization and dematerialization. This dialectic is expressed here as the theme of presence. Kocheishvili develops his signature technique of relief using construction plaster. Some of the reliefs are white, others employ acrylic colors. The technique puts certain limitations on the freedom of sculpting: it is less dynamic and impressionistic. The reliefs are also rather shallow. On the other hand, it offers ample opportunities to play with composition, an area where the artist feels especially strong. In one of his poems Kocheishvili wrote:

The morning is empty.
wait
don't stick
whatever you fancy into it
let it be.

I think Kocheishvili's idea of composition is the poetry of filling the void with the most essential content, the image is freed from all things "optional," such as the inertia of the brush's movement, all those unnecessary arabesques and touches. Perhaps it is in relief that the artist achieves true symbolism ("Angels", "A Family") – a goal he did not pursue in painting. His symbolism is never literal in any case: even when Kocheishvili uses traditional pictorial archetypes, he endows them with flesh and plan-forming potential.

Kocheishvili treats materialization and dematerialization as aspects of life's movement with behavioral and creative artistry. Whether consciously or not, he has something in common with the masters of metaphor (Dmitry Krasnopevtsev, Mikhail Shvartsman, and others) that may provide an appropriate context for his art. Nevertheless (let us return to the beginning of the story), our bird is not the proverbial kind that may perish if one of its claws is stuck. After leaving the imprint of its claw on the existing discourse, this blackbird continues its flight. It is the freedom of flight that makes this art so appealing.