Dmitrii Volkov

About the Artist

Metal artist Dmitrii Volkov is a graduate of Russia's oldest art and design school, the Saint Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy, which specializes in contemporary and traditional decorative and applied arts. His professional achievements began early, starting while he was a student and received First Place in the Young Jewelers Competition in St. Petersburg on the 150th anniversary of the birth of Carl Fabergé. With four generations of ancestors involved in construction and architecture, and having been raised by his grandfather, as one of the leading engineers in civil engineering, Volkov could not help but inherit a sense of structural strength. It is possible that reference books on construction equipment given by the grandfather to his four-year-old grandson, who could not yet read, but was fascinated by the graphic diagrams of units and mechanisms, led Volkov to an understanding and artistic sense of structural units. Steel is the only material capable of working on itself, as it can take on any form from the most massive like an anvil or railroad track to the thinnest like a razor blade or a sewing needle while still retaining the ability to bear a load, these material properties make Volkov enjoy the endless possibilities that steel has to offer. Creating his steel objects, Volkov tries to comprehend every detail. The use of blacksmith connections gives his mind the opportunity to express his thoughts and feelings with the help of not only a clearly readable form of objects, but also a language of construction, tense in one place and liberated in others.