With the work Gustav Klutsis: Dynamic city – Reconstruction we attempted to merge the medium of pop-up book and the concept of pictorial plane.

The reference for our work is a specific picture by constructivist artist Gustav Klutsis: “Dynamic city”. In it, the artist flattened a modernized socialist city of the future on the flat surface of paper. We used the dynamic form of a pop-up book to animate the process that is opposite to Klutsis’ (in fact, it is opposite to the process of any artist that works in a two-dimensional medium). The book closely resembles the original “Dynamic city” – until the viewer opens the book; at that point, the two-dimensional elements lift up and become a three-dimensional construction. The three-dimensional configuration doesn’t resemble a “true” cityscape. The book in its open state shows, how the pictured city would look, if Klutsis’ artwork was an illusionistic picture of reality. Because the original is abstract (not illusionistic), the three-dimensional cityscape is clearly deformed.