Seeing through the artist’s hand
Rustam Khalfin

The book, produced specially for a show at White space Gallery in 2007 and with contributions by Aliya Abykayeva – Tiesenhausen, Victor Misiano and Valeria Ibraeva, presents a progression of his ideas, which revolve around visions through the artist’s hand, of the artist’s hand, and the close examination of human bodies. Khalfin positions his perspective as originating from the ‘base level’, or earth, and is directed upwards. This, the artist claims, is the true nomad’s view of the world. It also includes one of his more recent video works Northern Barbarians: Part II - "The Love Races"(2000), which was chosen to represent the nation at the Venice Biennale of 2005.

Khalfin’s artistic experiments have engaged with a wide-array of subjects - including the history of Central Asia, the pre-Islamic history of Kazakhstan, nomad traditions, the inner workings of consciousness, the loss of his wife, to name but a few. Always though, the conceptual dimension of his oeuvre is complimented by an underlying sensuality.

Kazakhstan’s most important living artist, Rustam Khalfin, a Tartar born in Tashkent (Uzbekistan), began his professional life during the stagnant Soviet era, graduating in 1972 from the Moscow Architecture Institute. In the 1980s, while residing in St. Petersburg, he became involved with the circle surrounding Vladimir Sterligov – a close associate of Kasimir Malevich. It was then that Khalfin was first exposed to the richness of the Russian Avant-garde, a point of departure for his own work. Shortly thereafter, in partnership with his wife Lydia, he began to pioneer performance art in Kazakhstan. From then until today, Khalfin has ceaselessly experimented with a variety of media, also including painting, sculpture, installation, and video.