| A Visit to Leonid Lerman's Studio * photos by Sam Sharif
The work of Leonid Lerman marks a
serious departure from the main trends that dominate contemporary
sculpture. Whereas abstraction and a retreat from the human form has
been a predominant impulse in post-war western art, Lerman’s work
embraces human form, but one ensnared in the artist’s own struggle with
human meaning, language, and
Educated as a monument sculptor in Soviet Russia, Lerman’s aesthetic has been shaped by an impulse for inner freedom and a struggle against conformity. Out of the backdrop of socialist realism in which he was educated, he developed an artistic impulse that emphasizes sensuousness while not abandoning a commitment to reflection and thought attaining a curious power by shattering reification and privileging intuition and spirit over reflection and matter.
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Logos 4.1 - Winter 2005
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the
desire to express the authenticity of human experience. His sculpture
struggles with the very essence of the problem of human meaning,
interpretation, language and the indecipherable gap between subjective
experience and objective knowledge. Refusing visual comfort to the
viewer, his work forces the evolution of new forms of visual experience
and has broadened the horizons of modern sculpture. 
