Museum of Russian Icons Winter Newsletter 2019 MoRI_WINTER_2019_newsletter web | Página 5

Konstantin Simun
The Sacred in the Profane
February 22 – June 30, 2019
Presented in Partnership with the FITCHBURG ART MUSEUM
T
he Museum is pleased to announce a new
exhibition of works by Russian artist
Konstantin Simun, curated in partnership
with the Fitchburg Art Museum.
Simun often poses the question “trash or treasure?”
when speaking of his sculptures. He asks us to see spiri-
tual images in banal plastic vessels such as milk jugs and
crates. He accomplishes this through a slight alteration
to the original form, a shift in orientation, or the fusing
of one object with another. These objects are so ubiqui-
tous and ordinary that we rarely stop to consider their
formal qualities, let alone contemplate them
as symbolic or transcendent objects. Simun’s
fascination with plastic did not diminish
over the years, and he continues to create
artworks not only from plastic, but also
traditional materials like bronze, silver, and
ceramic that replicate the visages that he
sees in plastic.
Simun was born in Leningrad in 1934 and
immigrated to the United States in 1988,
settling in Boston. In St. Petersburg,
Russia and internationally, he’s known
for such monumental sculptures as
The Broken Ring on the shore of Lake
Ladoga. The Broken Ring serves as the
official state memorial to the Nazi siege of Leningrad.
Residents of Massachusetts may have seen his work at
such institutions as the deCordova Sculpture Park and
Museum or the Fuller Craft Museum over the years, or,
more recently at TurnPark in the Berkshires. Or, they
may be familiar with his work Doo-Doo—a memorial to
the Puppeteer Igor Fokin, installed in Harvard Square,
Cambridge.
The Sacred in the Profane offers a survey of Simun’s
unique capacity to find forms that appear in ancient art
and Christian iconography in molded plastic and other
consumer objects since his arrival to the United States
from Russia in the early 1980s. Viewed within the
Museum of Russian Icons, it is possible to con-
template Simun’s exposure to the icon tradition,
as well as to consider the way in
which Simun’s story of discovery
and fascination with plastic paral-
lels the Museum of Russian Icon’s
founder and former president of
Nypro Plastics Gordon B. Lankton’s con-
noisseurship of icons.
The opening reception will be held on Thursday,
February 21 from 6:00-8:00pm. Check our website
calendar, www.museumofrussianicons.org/calendar
for details and registration information.
Konstantin Simun, Scream (Self-portrait), 2002
WINTER 2019 | 3