FIGURE
1999

The Convicts Set a Problem
Marina Ovsova
Moskovsky Komsomolets, March 23, 1999

"What do you think it is?" – artist Daniltsev shows me a small plexiglas figure filled with foil flowers, just like in amber. I turn this strange thing in my hands and can recall only the "secrets" game of our childhood. You dig a hole in the sand, make a pattern of sweet wrappers, cover it with a piece of glass and then fill it up with sand again. And then with bated breath and very carefully you begin digging a hole, a kind of a window, – and here it is, your glimmering miracle.

"Just imagine, I found this thing a many years ago at Tishinsky market, some granny was selling her old stuff. Since then it has become my talisman."

We should add, not only a talisman but also the cause for a lot of exhibitions and actions among which there is this very thing resembling the "secrets" game. For a long time Ignat Daniltsev has been unaware of this artifact’s purpose, he even decided to make a gallop poll. Some of the answers were pretty funny. Some people assumed that this small plexiglas rhomb is nothing less than an invention of the "shuttles" in order to draw away the attention from their smuggled goods, or sort of bait for big fish. While the others thought this artifact was a part of a children’s game set. As a result, we got an exhibition at "TV Gallery". Entering the venue, the viewers will certainly get surprised when they see a huge chessboard on the floor, with the visually constructed answers in the squares. It so happened that while preparing his exhibition, Ignat suddenly found out what his talisman meant. It turned out that this was a pawn, one of those chess pieces the convicts make for themselves in the zone. One can move along this drawn chessboard as he likes, it depends on what he feels himself – being a pawn or a queen.

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