Extracts from reviews of the specialists in the art and official media representatives

Assistant director on science of the Moscow Pushkin Fine Art Museum, Professor I.E. Danilova, Moscow, April 7, 1997: Pushkin Fine Art Museum closely watches the exhibitional activities of the Museum of Classical and Modern Arts Burganov Centre. Exhibition Between Reality and Dream by German artists Ekkahart Bouchon and Nina Geling attracts attention and gives a better idea of artistic life in modern Germany. We wish them every success in their activity, which doubtless contributes to creation of all-european cultural environment...

Rector of the Stroganov State University for Arts and Industry, Professor F.S. Kwasov, Moscow, April 11, 1997: Administration of Stroganov State University for Arts and Industry is grateful for the seminar Variable Art for students and professors of our university. Accept our congratulations to the great success of your exhibition at the Museum of Classical and Modern Arts Burganov Centre. We hope for the future collaboration in organising seminars and practical classes in our university.

First Councellor of the German Embassy in Russia, Head of Department on Culture, Mr. Wolfgang Drautz, Moscow, May 6, 1997: ... I am glad, that your exhibition Between Dream and Reality has found a positive responce in Moscow. It is private initiatives and direct contacts between artists and galleries of both countries that contribite to cultural exchange between Germany and Russia. After many long years, during which the state determined or strived to determine, what kind of culture there ought to be, finally came the time, when the artists themselves deside, what they are going to exhibit. In this respect I wish you every success for your future work, especially for your projects in Russia.

State Advisor on Culture in the Senate Office of the Free Hanseatic City of Hamburg, Mr. Gerd Hinnerk Behlmer, July 1. 1997: I am very much impressed by the exhibition of your wives and your works and find the idea of variability very interesting. I gratefully accept your suggestion to show this exhibition in St. Petersburg in late October 1997 during the celebration of the 40-th anniversary of friendship between the twin cities Hamburg and St.Petersburg.

Rector of the Stroganov State University, Professor A.A.Dubrovin, Head of the department of architectural-decorative plastics, Peoples artist of Russia, USSR State Prise winner, corresponding member of Academy of Arts of Russia, professor A.N.Burganov, Moscow, July 20, 2000 : Administration of the Stroganov State University for Arts and Industry, department of architectoral-decorative plastics, express their thanks for the successful seminar on wooden sculpture for the students of our university on 16-26 June 2000, using tools made by STIL company in the workshops of the Burganov Center. We hope for our further collaboration.

Head of Goethe Institute St. Petersburg Mr. Wilfred Eckstein, December 1. 2000:
Ive known Russian artist Mrs. Nina Geling-Bouchon since 1995. Together with sculptor Ekkahart Bouchon, she has taken part in many exhibitions in Russia: Moscow, St.Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Those exhibitions were combined with public appearances and practical seminars. Both were highly appreciated by the specialists in the art, such as professors of Stroganov Art Academy, as well as spectators and the media people. I am of a very high opinion of artistic and cultural activity of Mrs. Geling-Bouchon, concerning establishing cultural connections between Russia and Germany and presentation of the German cultural life abroad.

Russian Collection. Isobrasitelnoye Iskusstvo, N 5-6, June-August 1997. (Art critic Marina Sedlukova): ... in the works of art by Nina and Ekkahart there is no self-satisfied stability, statics. Various elements of the same work, be it a picture or a sculpture, find themselves in an invisible but perceptible movement towards one another. These inner dynamic currents of the works of art send the spectator some peculiar impulses, wonderfully revealing the whole spectre of emotions of the artist at the moment of creation down to the finest shades of his mood. Those impulses brightening up and liberating scpectators imagination, plunge him into the sphere of associative thinking, include him in the sphere of symbolism, presupposed by the artist, thus assisting understanding of the emotional and psychological mystery, encoded in the work...One can say, that the artists challenge the others: Create with us! Say Yes to your fantasy!...Variable pieces of art induce one to action... Just one touch to the work, a slight turn - and you have already become an artist...

Lüneburger Zeitung, N 122, May 28, 1998: Nina Geling-Bouchon and Ekkahart Bouchon use for their project Between Dream and Reality patrician hall and inner garden...His sculptures and wall reliefs originate from Arp to Moore, but are nevertheless distinctive. As a rule his wooden forms, filled with emotion, are worked through to the smallest detail. In his works as well as in Ninas prevail soft feminine forms. Strain is achieved by contrasts, such as breaches or unpolished parts. In any case, these works posess a high decorative value. But it is not enough for Bouchon. He cites the Beyss definition of art, but he also wants, that the spectator could become a creator, i.e. he may change his works of art, which are often made from more than one pieces, vary them, make new groups, find new positions. The same can be done to most of Ninas canvases: one can hang them lengthwise and across or upside down, there is no longer up and down, left or right...

Rusian Regional TV, St.Petersburg, October 21 and 22, 1997: ... in Germany, Rumania, Italy everywhere, where they exposed their works of art, there were no indifferent spectators. Perhaps it is due to the fact, that practically all their works posess the same feature in common: variability. Children supported this idea most actively. They were at once imbued with the idea of co-authorship and gave unusually beautiful names to the sculptures of Ekkahart and to Ninas canvases...

The Fifth Inform Programme of the Central Russian TV, 22.10.97 : Over is the time when one dared not change anything on the still canvas or stone fantasies of an artist. From now on pieces of art lose their completeness. One can disagree with the artist and make ones own corrections, fearlessly change the composition, at ones own will turn canvases and sculptures, in general, try to achieve perfection together. In contrast to the traditional forms of mobile and stable, Nina Geling and Ekkahart Bouchon use a new form of variable. Exhibition of works of this creative couple has been opened in the Union of Artists under the intriguing title Between Dream and Reality. The artists have decided, that our whole life goes on the interface between reality and dream, and presented 66 works: pictures, sculptures and reliefs...

Cultural Channel of All-Russian TV, June 4, 2001: Thanks to the Russian painter Nina Geling and German sculptor Ekkahart Bouchon in the house with the bad flat now constantly lives cat Begemot, who is no less mysterious and double-faced, than his proto-type from the novel by Bulgakov. However, everything around the cat at this exposition is also highly mysterious. The pictures can be hanged upside down, and the sculptures easily change their configuration. In the wooden forms Ekkahart Bouchon presents absolutely immaterial things, such as charm, disappointment, dreams of spirits, of fantasy. The idea of magie itself is represented in the sculptures, and every spectator can interpret it in his own way: a magical glance, darkness and light, gates to non-existance, etc. The pictures are fragments of strange events, which can happen not only in the novel: obsession, chance, a frivolous moment.This mysterious exhibition has been opened in the famous house due to the efforts of the public foundation for the preservation of Bulgakovs house. And this is the first exhibition here.…