If the paintings in Kozyrev’s Lost Landscape series examine what we see, imagine, and forget as we drive, the paintings in the series entitled Black Square seem to pause on the journey and ask “which way shall I go?” The viewer is confronted with multiple one-point perspective “destinations” which layer, collide, and then veer irretrievably apart toward distant, unidentifiable, villages, industrial structures, and the occasional lonely tree. There is a tension in each painting between the quiet thrill of savoring a beautiful vista or sky and the anxiety of constant choice about the future we make when traveling.

The paintings draw us closer and closer as we seek to see the detail on the tiny tree on the left or try to soak up the miniature details of the dome or the tower in the distance. If we could just get closer…But there are vast, fractured planes that stand between us and these visual rewards. It is unclear if these are roads to be traveled, or fields and properties that impede our way. And the beautifully rendered skies are detailed, glossy, and calm…yet ominous.

The series is named Black Square in honor of the Suprematist Malevich painting of the same name, which declared to the world in 1915 that it was the first painting of a new movement. The end to the past and the start to the future. From this point, there was no return. The other tension in this body of work is the struggle to move relentlessly forward and avoid repetition. When the Constructivists and Suprematists were working they were urgently, desperately, joyfully trying to embrace a whole new world order and bring it about through art. What must that be like, to be a part of something so very new and different from anything that came before and fervently believe that you can make it happen through your art?