Vladimir Kush: The Hidden Meanings in Vladimir Kush’s Art Revealed | DSH #1550

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There we come to that question of what is American Dream in comparison to Russian dream.

In Russia, for instance, somebody is telling the person like, okay, don't worry about anything.

Just go to bed.

In the morning, you will be rich and famous.

I don't know if it's in the blood, but this is how people get rich over what American dream is will be rewarded according to their talent and hard work.

Okay, guys, Vladimir Kush here today.

Got a lot of art here.

First artist on the show.

Thanks for coming, man.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, I'm getting into art now.

So I was researching

who's an artist in Vegas and your name came up.

Oh, I'm honored.

Yeah, you brought some beautiful pieces here.

I don't even know where to start, but we got this.

Is this a butterfly apple?

It's a butterfly apple, yes.

And Enero 66 here, and we have some other stuff.

Nice.

Which one of these is the most recent one you made?

Reason sculpture is this.

Oh, yeah.

The butterfly apple, we just casted it.

Not the idea, but the

bronze itself.

How did you come up with that idea?

This was, you know, This was a process that is hard to explain, you know, like, and then this piece probably is just the best to

explain the creative process.

Okay.

When

if we imagine that the caterpillar is an idea,

then it goes into this apple and makes an invisible route inside.

It's invisible to the artist himself.

So sometimes it takes a long and very complicated route to make it to come out as butterfly wings.

Wow.

As a butterfly.

I love that.

So

that's the reason I brought this piece in because it illustrates the creative process, which is partially unknown to the artist himself.

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and especially for the outsider right because it's just uh subconscious thoughts right yeah the the fact is uh that uh there's a butterfly is like a miracle it's uh that's why i'm comparing it to the life cycle of the butterfly

and uh butterfly is a symbol in many different cultures because of the of the fact that it illustrates the whole life cycle from the caterpillar that is

life

to the chrysalis that is death and then to the butterfly that is

revival and

flight of the spirits.

You like the flying element now that I noticed because you got this one.

You got the this is the dragonfly, right?

This is a dragonfly.

Yeah, and then behind you, we got some books flying so we have a butterfly the dragonfly and a bird yes you love the flight we have this yes because it's it's symbol it's a symbol yeah

what is what is the dragonfly symbol as well it's it's about uh

overcoming a mundane of everyday life i mean even though the wheels is a symbol uh of uh exploring the earth

Let's say because that piece is called Route 66.

Yeah, and it's actually at the bottom

is the base is molded from the real Route 66.

Oh, wow.

Well, as we know,

that was romanticized by John Steinberg back then, you know, the Route 66.

And

the wheels is a way to get to explore.

uh uh the wild west while uh it's going on those wheels all the way to the grand canyon it can fly over the Grand Canyon on those wings.

And the wings is a symbol of overcoming the everyday mundane and reaching the new heights.

I love that.

Is this one made out of bronze too?

This is also a bronze.

It has many parts to it.

We have a large one that has 88 pieces actually welded together.

Oh my gosh.

Separately cast.

Wow, we'll throw up a photo of that one on the screen.

That's impressive.

88 pieces.

88 pieces all

cast separately and uh welded together yeah that one was wasn't took months to make right oh yes it's a foundry that makes them but we have to create each part separately

and create a model was each of those parts was that the most time you've spent on one single piece

I'm doing compilation pieces, the paintings, where I put a lot of different ideas together, and especially from

the paintings that has been done before

and uh

in order for me to make it work in a new story and connect them together and organically coexist that takes a long time sometimes uh such work may take uh up to three months wow you need a lot of patience as an artist

but i uh parallel to that i'm completing other small pieces too.

Yeah.

So you're still working harder than ever right now?

No, I usually work on several pieces.

And I do have help, of course, because it's impossible for the artist himself to do all the molding, let's say.

So

I have people that are working for me

that are helping to do sculptures, let's say, or other objects of art or jewelry.

What about the piece behind you?

What's the story with that one?

Diary of discoveries, yes.

So the book is a symbol in our life, a huge symbol.

I'm not sure about new generation, but in our old

generation, I'm feeling myself

almost an old guy in that sense.

For the

other generations, the book was a symbol of many things.

It's a diary of our life.

It's maps that we travel through.

It is.

We have a saying, you know, the metaphorical saying, we are turning the page of the history, or or we're turning the page in exploration of the cosmos.

So, we're literally using that metaphor to illustrate

the image of the book movement.

So, it comes to us through the image of the book.

And so, we are

the book

gives us the wings to fly.

It inspires us.

It's a source of inspiration.

And here, the bird is a symbol, universal symbol of free-flying spirits

is taken off and turning into a bird somewhere around the horizon,

which I call a point of revelation.

It's a point when we realize that we're not only a material being, but also a spiritual.

And we have wings.

Yeah, I love that.

I believe we are spiritual beings as well.

I love that you incorporate that aspect into your art.

That's really

and uh the curtain uh symbolizes implying on a sail that takes us out on the journey of life journey of life on that flight fry a flight of life yeah you've been uh you've been making art for a long time yeah this image was it was very popular we uh

we already have a second edition on that and uh has been popular throughout the internet even

there was a musician snowy white i don't know

He used to play for Roger Waters

and Pink Floyd.

Heard of them, yeah.

And

he used it as well on his.

Oh, the album cover.

Wow, is this a CD?

Yeah.

I haven't seen a CD in so long.

Nice.

Beautiful.

Snowy White.

Yeah.

Well done.

It's a most

It's a piece that has been in demand the most.

Yeah.

That's your top seller right now

i would say yes nice are these at the art gallery or are people able to buy these yes it's in the gallery nicely i want to stop by the gallery here and all our galleries we have five wow five now where are they located uh uh one of them here in caesars palace in the forum shops the other one is uh in maui hawaii

as a replacement to the one that burned in la haina you've had a store burned up

which we had it for uh 23 years almost.

Wow.

Since 2001.

Then

the gallery in Laguna Beach that was opened in 2005, Laguna Beach, California.

Then we have Miami Beach Gallery, South Beach, Lincoln Road.

And we have a gallery that's recently opened is in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Nice.

Miami.

I'll be there for Art Basil this year.

Do you do big events during that?

Yeah, we did we did Art Miami.

Nice.

we did the whole run with the shows that are done by uh the same people basically but uh i i don't see myself doing it again because people who you know since we have our own galleries i don't think it makes a big sense yeah it is a lot of work yeah what's the next step for you are you going to start doing digital art or do you have your eyes on any art oh we did we did some anime you know partial animation of art we uh we recently released the whole series of lenticulars.

Lenticulars is when they printed on

the lenses and they give you an impression of the 3D and even some movement in them.

And

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Not in art industry, very well developed yet.

You can see it in Art Miami sometimes, things like that.

But they mostly even not print it in the United States.

They have to be imported from somewhere, those lenses.

And And we print them actually lately in Russia.

Okay.

Wow.

And we bring them here.

And

we are kind of establishing a market for them right now.

Yeah.

Of course.

Yes, of course.

Of course, it requires the whole...

involvement of the graphic designer to make to make it happen, but under my supervision, of course.

Yeah, yeah.

The art scene in Russia, what's that like over there?

It's almost nothing, especially with the war.

It's actually came down and many galleries has closed.

Dang because

since there's no market, the art over there has been sold to mostly Forbes list of Russia.

And I am

dealing with a jewelry factory that is in Bangkok.

next to Tiffany's factories and Pandora's factories.

But

they have closed their location their gallery in moscow after the war has started

uh ukrainian war yeah

because the

most of the people that were their clients they moved out wow dang i wonder what other countries are uh going to be the next market for art do you have your eyes on any specific

i would say that uh

art market for the things that we do are the English-speaking countries.

English-speaking.

English-speaking.

I would say the whole set of like, you know, Great Britain, Australia

are the ones that would be

where we tested the market.

And in Australia, I have done a couple of shows

with other

galleries, and they all were successful almost the same way how

it is in the United States.

Do you ever collaborate?

Canada.

Yeah.

Do you ever collaborate with other artists?

Or you just do?

I used to exhibit other artists in my galleries

before,

but at a certain point,

about almost 15 years ago, there was a request even from our consultants to focus on specifically just my art.

And we started to be,

we became a mono gallery.

Mono gallery.

Those are rare, right?

Monogallery.

It's rare.

It's absolutely rare because it's hard to find in the art industry any examples of the artist that owns his own galleries and sustains them, right?

I feel like the art industry is one of the hardest industries to make a living in.

It is hard because the

community, the art market is not as huge as like book market

or

podcasts.

Podcasts or

things like that.

So it's a

it is

a limited amount of people.

Very few.

That's why art industry is very tight, very competitive.

Yeah, and talent isn't enough in the art industry.

You need the right team, the right marketing.

You need the right team, you need to.

There we come to that question of American dream.

What is it?

I just wanted to

point out, like, what is American dream in comparison to Russian dream?

In Russia, for instance, where I grew up, of course, I went to schools.

In all the fairy tales,

there's a character that becomes rich overnight.

So you just share luck.

Somebody is telling the person like, okay, don't worry about anything.

Just go to bed.

In the morning,

you will be rich and famous and successful.

That's what happens.

I don't know if it's in the blood, but this is how people get get rich over there.

Really?

It's not through

hard work and talent.

So I never was

into that too much.

So

for me,

immigrating to the United States was always,

you know, was a was a value.

So, because I knew that

what American dream is, is when people are with talent,

they will be reaching,

they will be rewarded according to their talent and hard work.

And it's not only limited to even material well-being, but also to

this,

to reaching out to the dreams.

Yeah, absolutely.

Was your family...

They are.

Yeah.

Was your family artistic?

Your parents?

Well, yes, I grew up in a family that had

artistic values.

My father brought me up, and I was sitting on his lap since I was three years old and finishing little drawings that he sketched for me.

Wow, at three years old.

Yes, I started to be a little bit different at that age already.

And since then, it runs on my whole

father's side of my family.

I guess it's a little bit genetic.

Yeah.

Yes.

My grandmother

has been an artist,

but she never became a professional artist because in old times Russia, it was not popular for the woman

to be an artist.

Pursue the career in that sense.

Yeah, they don't work over there, right?

Yes.

But since then, everyone was on my father's side has been drawing and inclined to art, poetry, literature.

Even though my father was a specialist on differential equations,

part of his work was in station mirror, you know,

that was

hanging out in space

for a while.

And then he worked for space technologies in Russia.

Nice.

but

always inclined to poetry, to

metaphors, too, and that's how it started.

Who were your early inspirations when it came to poetry and art when you first started out?

My inspirations were the

artists that were showing in Russia who

were called avant-garde underground art.

So there were big lines to see them and my father would take me there and we will see the paintings that were painted by the artists that had more access maybe to see the Western art.

So, like, let's say Salvador Dali or Magrit, René Magrid,

or other artists

like that from the modern times.

But also, I grew up around museums.

We had museums in Russia, and we had some classical art

up to Impressionists.

And that also had a big impact on me because

I studied art since I was seven.

Wow.

Had art history lessons every week in art school.

So we learned art from the ancient Egypt or from the ancient times, even before Egypt, and going up to

almost modern times.

But

modern art was not accessible.

still.

It was a Soviet Union and it was closed and

the Soviets propaganda has never

uh

uh

propagated

so it's propaganda never propagated people like dali omagrit suralis interesting even to this day it's still like that over there no no it's it's wide open oh okay it's wide open for that because there's internet and uh total access to everything

but it yeah that makes sense ancient art i want to see what that looks like ancient like, I would say

cliff art, you know.

Yeah, the caveman thing.

Cave art, yes.

Yeah.

We even studied that, you know, to begin with.

How did they

do it?

Like, they need extreme heat, right, to paint in the cave walls.

It's really, really hard rock.

Yeah, they used other rocks to

other rocks?

Interesting.

And scratched on it.

Wow.

I wonder if that stuff is worth any money these days.

But yeah.

And

later on, you know of course renaissance art was was studied very thoroughly

did your art take off right away when you started uh selling it

no is uh you know some scientists discovered that it takes um

about 10 years of perseverance and knocking in the wall in one place before you'll see the results

and therefore I would say that the whole 90s, that's what it took me to get to a different level business-wise.

That's a long time.

I came to US, officially immigrated in 1990.

1990.

And since then, I started to do that work

that led me to metaphorical realism

somewhere on the edge of 1998.

And this is when

while I found that metaphorical realism, that's a a formula for me, that is when it took off.

That is what these are, metaphorical realism?

Yes,

this style is called metaphorical realism.

So you were one of the first pioneers of that style.

I would say, yes,

Salado Dali experimented with this in the early stage of his life, but he's never pursued that.

So

he was a classical surrealist.

So there's a big difference between surrealism, which deals with distortion or illustrating

Freudian dreams, I would say.

Yeah.

And metaphorical realism, which is mostly positive side of

visionary art like that, positive side, because

we deal with metaphors.

I do not distort art,

but

find a connection

between ideas.

As

Aristotle once said, what is metaphor?

He defined it

in the most transparent way.

He said,

metaphor is intuitive perception in the things that are different.

Likeness.

Intuitive perception of likeness in the things that are different.

Wow.

Therefore,

I'm looking for.

interplay of ideas,

of different ideas, and connecting them, which resonates with people

greatly because they also grew up on fairy tales.

And there is a, I think, it's a big demand in the society for this type of arts because

people, when they grow up,

they

forget about their dreams.

They go into

into the life of facts.

They think they're surrounded by facts.

But as that famous dramatist Henry Miller has put it,

he said that people think they are surrounded by facts while in the reality they are walking through the forest of symbols.

And I would add through metaphors.

Wow.

Metaphors exist primarily what people think in the world of linguistics.

We use metaphors in everyday life.

Even that simple metaphor, time is money, it's already a metaphor in linguistic.

But since a visual impact on people is more powerful than words, a visual metaphor has even more impact.

So I consider myself as a

inventing, as the one who

exploring visual metaphor.

Yeah.

What it does to people.

Wow.

The power of a metaphor.

Yeah.

It can really make you think a good metaphor, right?

Yes, because people recognize their own thinking.

You know, When they walk into the gallery, they usually

the first impression is like, oh,

it feels like I have seen it before.

Maybe in my dreams, but I just could not realize them.

I could not just express it.

And now I see it right here on canvas in front of me.

Wow, I love that.

And that's what triggers, you know, why

our

client base.

Yeah.

Who's your client base?

Is it a lot of older guys?

uh some older some uh but we we have younger audience as well yeah these days you need that right because our generation i wonder if we collect art as much as our parents probably not right

no the millennials you know there's a trend going on like in western art let's say you know the people uh the older

generation they collected western art but now their kids are collecting uh different art but That's what they

like.

Yeah, we're collecting art.

We're collecting anime and NFTs and weird art.

Yeah,

I like art, though.

I'm also a businessman, so a lot of art is good for appreciation, too, you know?

So when I collect art, it also holds its value well, which I like.

But I mainly collect things I like.

The symbolism is important to me.

It means something.

Absolutely.

That's what people are buying

metaphorical realism for.

Yeah.

They're not buying it just to decorate their walls.

Interior designers are rare.

They're going out.

Now we got

our paintings or sculptures, they're jumping off.

They're just jumping on you.

They are like a new family member, I would say.

Yeah, this would take over.

That's why they're not popular with interior designers because then for interior designers, they're looking for just a bright spot on the wall that's matching the furniture

yes if if there's a meaning and a message that's contradicting their purpose

yeah something like this or the statue here would take over the whole room you put it in there yeah it will be a focal point yeah as soon as someone walks in they're going to be like what is that it's a point of conversation too that's why people like it because their neighbors and friends are seeing it and it's a point of conversation absolutely if you could meet any artist and talk to any artist, dead or alive, who would it be?

Would it be Dali?

Dali was very special in a way, so for communication as a person.

So it would be hard to talk to him.

Oh, yeah.

He couldn't talk.

But definitely a genius.

Yeah.

Definitely.

Well, a lot of artists are like that, right?

They're super smart and they can articulate through words as well as their paintings and their art.

Yeah,

it's common how in our industry the shows are done.

These artists are usually in a little

place there.

They're limited, you know, by

to meet only the collectors.

And the collectors that bought, they're coming, just shaking their hands and they're taking pictures, and that's it.

You know, we started to do the shows.

And mostly it's done in our

gallery in Laguna Beach in California.

And those shows used to be even full production, but full production means that like even with the stage and video presentation and the speech.

Wow.

So I

talk to the people that are coming and coming in,

the RSVPs.

Sometimes we have up to 300 people, 200 to 300 people

standing there and listening to the speech.

And I am presenting the new art

and telling the stories about creating it and where it comes from,

mythology that is related to this, the poetry and world culture that it's connected to.

Wow.

You're very inclusive.

You have like a community.

Yes.

I mean,

we have quite a client base that are very loyal to us.

That's cool.

There will be, if I'm doing those shows two, three times a year, there will be a big crowd.

Wow.

As usual.

What's the next show?

What's the next thing you're working on right now?

Just past weekend, we did that show in Laguna Beach.

It's a two-day show, Saturday and Sunday.

Got it.

And we did present the new paintings, new sculptures, and one of those sculptures is right here, butterfly.

Nice.

You got a website too for people watching to check out?

Yes, absolutely.

It's kushfineart.com.

Amazing.

We'll link it below.

Anything else you want to close off with?

Thanks for coming today.

I would say that

when you are asking about the generations that are reacting to it, I would say that the younger generation, especially kids, are very susceptible to

this art.

They are reacting to this very...

vividly because

their brain is still still has a much wider bridge between the emotional and intuitive side.

And therefore, they have a much wider, much more open and free imagination.

And therefore,

when they absorb those ideas,

they are capable of reproducing them because they have no limitations.

They are capable of reproducing them themselves.

And they start drawing and coming up with more ideas.

This was a base for the contest that I once did in Las Vegas

with school district of Nevada when we had a contest.

And I presented the work online, which is called

Where the Sun Goes.

And I gave that theme to the kids

and they

distributed it through the school system.

And we had a lot of submissions,

all different kinds.

And we reserved a space in the gallery for all the winners it was those works were remarkable wow quite remarkable and i invited

uh the kids to come over to the gallery and you know like for them to be hanging uh to to have their artwork hanging in the in the gallery in the art gallery that is something that had never happened to them i love it

some gifts for those kids um unfortunately it didn't continue because of the you know the pandemic that is not supporting arts, of course.

But

I would say that

one of the greatest quotes

regarding imagination is coming from Albert Ernst.

He said, imagination is more

powerful than the knowledge, because imagination has no limits.

Well, the knowledge has some limitations.

I love that.

That's a great quote.

We'll end with that.

Thanks for coming on, man.

Yeah, I appreciate it, too.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

Absolutely.

Check out the galleries, guys.

Check out the website.

I'll see you next time.

I hope you guys are enjoying the show.

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