It is hardly worth to dispute the statement that one of the most notable results of foregone XX century and rapidly developing XXI century was the expansion of visual experience of humankind directly connected with the plastic arts. Previously unseen forms created by imagination freed from the mimetic tasks formerly ascribed to plastic arts, filled canvas and paper. Volumetric structures of unprecedented contours and shapes replaced sculptures in museums and private interiors, as well as public urban spaces. This was added up by all kinds of virtual structures on monitors and projection screens that often replaced tapestry and painting in exhibition spaces. New visual constructions do not necessarily spring from real-life experience of their creator, they can be the reflection of his imagination and embodiment of his most abstract or random thoughts. Mental images and mental forms of actual art ask for yet new methods of capturing and reproduction as well as new schemes of perception. The work of Vladimir Martynov is one of most convincing examples of the fruitfulness of introducing into familiar artistic context virtual phantoms that remain at the same time within the area of visual arts and thus further implement certain order in the plastic and formal chaos fraught with destruction.

What we see is essentially the personal, hard one, plastic Utopia, attached to today's realities of the world with all its complexity and controversy. The ability to create Utopia is – starting as far as the Renaissance – the inseparable part of Humanistic model of the world. In our newborn century, being true to this model is, unfortunately, one of the rarest and therefore one of most valuable and imperishable life principles.

Andrey Tolstoy

Doctor of Art History,

full member of the Academy of Arts

Moscow, Russia