Thaw, 2006, video, 3:40 min

Taking place on the edge of a snow-clad forest, Dmitry Gutov’s Thaw is based on a 19th century painting by Fedor Vasiliev. The romantic theme of a figure in the defrosting Russian snow, however, has transformed in nature as well as meaning in the wake of the geopolitical changes in Russia. The figure turns out to be that of a middle-aged man wading through slush, unavailingly trying to get out. Over and over he appears either to slip or make himself fall, even though there is no apparent reason to keep him there. The dramatic music accompanying these slips and slides was composed by Dmitri Shostakovich in the 1960s, quoting from the magazine Krokodil, a 1920s government-approved political satire, offering a gaze between nostalgia and real criticism about the humor underlying the Soviet regime.