Textile has rich tradition in the national culture of Udmurts. Thick felt and folt goods, as a variety of textile, were widely used in its time. First of all valenki (a kind of feltboots), head-dressed and as a material for warm. But many of art methods of ornamentation and technologies of production of some goods were lost because of number of reasons. At the same time, thick felt's culture - its characteristics, disposition, nature and heat of people's energy, which felt goods get in the process of production, give a quiet and cosy, some expendiency of life to the possessor of thick felt.

I can't treat with indifference to this quality of material. Especially as there is a negative attitude to this material. In the town people wear valenki only on special occasions, when it is freezing hard. And there are no any felt goods in the family life nowdays. Rich ethnic tradition are not used.

Full of idea of rebirth of this material, I create costumes and hats, lace and toies, mittens and foot-wear and I try to find new ways to usethick felt.

I offer you to look at the thick felt kindly and keenly. It's very old and at the same time modern and ecological material.

A. Pilin.

The winds of the Universe are blowing over the country scattering masterpieces - a square, a monument, a cemetery, a church - here and there ...

V.Turchin " Are We Ready to Write a New History of Russian Art?"

THE CALLIGRAPHY OF FELT

It does not matter what material Alexander Pilin chooses for his work: any material immediately begins to converse with the artist as an equal. For example clay , the very first material that he used revealed him what powers make the grass or the stalk of a flower sprout out of the ground or why the buds on the branches open. The artist's hands treat clay as a living substance permeated with vitality, the vitality that is so characteristic of all the artist's works. Alexander really mingles with his material into a single whole in the ritual of creation. Today it is clear that his mastering of different materials, his transition from clay to leather, from leather to felt was naturally determined. Thus with the help of his leather frames the artist explores the laws according to which the bodies of living creatures take their shapes. They suggest the frames of the creatures inhabiting the depths of the sea or the borderline between the sea and the land; you are aware of the tempo and the rhythm of their movements. The artist called them bioplastic.

The contiguity of these Pilin's works with music and ballet is natural and explicable. The full-weight monumental leather frames and hats tempt you to try to transform into another body and to attribute soul to it. It is exactly what Cristian Robolin the French choreographer did when he used A. Pilin's works as a motif for creating his fine choreographic miniatures. Alexander has never worked for the theatre. But the very view of the layout of his works conveys a certain impulse to the spectator; it is the impulse of a power transforming our attitude to the world around us. At such moments you long to touch the material with your hands, to try on the so- called exibited things and to walk up and down the room feeling yourself completely new and transformed. These works magnetize you and induce you to change somehow or other.

Felt is the real Universe of the artist. To him felt is a material capable of turning both into light, and into a thread. It is also a primordeal substance and a layer. The geometry of the constructions made of felt thread is transparent. Taken as a layer felt reminds you that it is the basis and the core of the life of many peoples. This is the second hypostasis of felt. The wheel, the symbol of nomadic life made of felt evokes a great number of associations. The precisely determined proportions of the circle, the rim and two rows of spokes bring you back to the image of the sun going its daily round over the string of nomad tents, over the nomad camp and the boundless steppe.

The geometry of the composition is made with the artist's own hands. The magic of the composition reveals itself through this archaic handwork, through the subtle gradation of the light - from the saturated core to the intensely lightened exterior circle.

It looks as if Alexander's woven felt lace was made specially to tease you. His pilinas - cloacks and mantlets - will match any avant-garde clothes. But the label warns you: don't wear them, but hang them on the wall. His laces have all the qualities of the refined calligraphic abstract composition. The composition with light and precise rhythm, with warm matt colour gradations.

I have got a slight suspicion that Alexander is fond of teasing us, his spectators in his own, rather good-humorous way. Among his last works you can find very attractive knapsacks. Just imagine - he gave them traditional Russian names : Ivan, Stepan, Fyodor... There is even a knapsack for the red-haired. It suddenly occured to me that I had liked that knapsack before I read the label and that my hair is really reddish.

The artist believes that national way of life and national character prompted him the idea to rehabilitate felt, this fine material. It is only lately that the Russian began to associate the word "valenok" with a muddler and a dasy-dreamer, clumsy and dull, as a typical country bumpkin should be. Those who are under 25 hardly ever know that our grandmothers used a tender word "valenochki" (a diminutive form of "valenki") if they happened to mention this traditional Russian footwear indispensable during the frosty winters. And you can think of no better variant especially if children are concerned.

Valenok taken as a prototype suggested A.Pilin an idea of a wonderful series of works: small valenochki turned into birds and bears. These valenochki with their toes turned into sculptural heads amuse children greatly. Some of them have very long , upturned toes and resemble the medieval shoes. Long cuts are made through them. Pilinas - waistcoats match them perfectly. There are also highly original and elegant lace-like felt sandals with leather soles.

Pilinkas - hats are also highly original and they are also quite suitable for wearing. Whoever tries them on the achieved effect is the same: your image changes completely due to the hat that serves as a real frame for your face. The laconic design of the pilinkas wonderfully matches the most exquisite fur lady's coats.

How can I rank Alexander Pilin among the artists of today's Russia ? He is a fine specislist who strives to break through the narrow bounds of provincial humdrum existence. Probably that's why he likes to make his exibitions entertaining and sensational, to turn them into places for discussions and arguments. At the same time he sticks to traditional values still cherished in provinces. He inherited interest and respect for the material he works with. He possesses a remarkable gift for persistence in overcoming technical obstacles he meets with in his work ( a quality so characteristic of any Russian craftsman ). His intellectual tastes and interests are not influenced by the metropolitan artistic assemblages where somebody's dubious opinions and authorities always dominate. And where the final word always rests with critics and art dealers from the West.

One more important detail: at the beginning of his career Alexander did not even dream of becoming an artist. He was a well-to-do young engineer and a scientist (his thesis was devoted to the problems of the constructing of sports guns ). But some 3-4 years after he defended his thesis a new passion overwhelmed him and art became the meaning and the mode of his life. His talent to invent, to regard any object as a certain device (a talent so characterietic of many engineers ) urged him to use usual materials for making unusual things, Alexander's inclination to abstract art adds a great deal of parodoxality to his works. The rigid and dogmatic principles of the Artists' Union were not for him. He joined it only after several sensational exibitions of his works . The main exibitions took place outside Izhevsk. He exibited his works in Moscow, then - in Paris, in Pret-a-Porter, later - in Finland and Switzerland. His next exibition will take place in Budapest.

Alexander Pilin is quite at home in the world of postmodern. He is an inheritor and he is an inventor. The artist creates not just for the sake of creating. Creative work to him is rather a way of thinking, of seeking the answers to the eternal, the simpliest questions. Principles of abstract art and fun are curiously intermingled in his works. Well, after all he is Mr Felt, as Mary Burkett, President of International Felt Association calls him.

Natalya Rozenberg, Dr. of Fine Arts, member of Russian section of AICA