The Space of Geser exhibition at the Irkutsk Regional Art Museum is ending. It is dedicated to the Buryat bronze casting master Geser Zodboev.

The exhibition of the bright, distinctive Buryat artist and master of bronze casting, Geser Zodboev, to the regret of many, will be closing in the coming days.
For a month, the Irkutsk Regional Art Museum gave all lovers of beauty the opportunity to immerse themselves in a special space, in a world lovingly created by the “genius of Buryat land.”
Geser Zodboev was born in 1963 in Ulan-Ude into a sculptor’s family. In 1995, he graduated from the Krasnoyarsk State Art Institute, Department of Ceramics, but despite this, apparently following in his father’s footsteps, he took up bronze casting. Since 1996, Geser began working in Ulan-Ude in the same workshop with Dmitry Budazhabé. Together they revived the almost lost ancient Buryat bronze-casting technique, created sculptural compositions in co-authorship, and helped prepare Dashi Namdakov’s first exhibition. The masters’ most famous joint projects became the two-meter statue of Buddha in the Ulan-Ude datsan (the only one in the world made in such a technique and of such size) and the fountain with fish, which also adorns the capital of Buryatia.
The organizers of the exhibition “Geser’s Space,” the owners of the “Goroo” gallery, Dmitry and Lina Ermontovich, said that the exposition was named this way not by chance. According to Buddhist beliefs, life consists of four elements—water, fire, earth, air—and there is a fifth element that unites all existence—space. “Space” in Zodboev’s work is a person with outstretched arms, showing that everything around is boundless, has no limits, and, like the wind, slips past him, through his fingers, scattering the tatters of clothing. It was precisely this “small-form” sculpture that, by fate’s will, became the last work of the talented Buryat master, who died at 44.
The creativity of Geser Zodboev is deeply national, and the originality of folk art is expressed in his works with extraordinary vividness. His works are in private collections in Russia, France, and Japan. One of the sculptures, “The First Prayer,” is in the collection of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. “His works are as if a single whole with the nature in which they exist. It is no coincidence that, especially among Eastern peoples, in primitive religions there is the idea that they are a particle of this world,” says Tatyana Ogorodnikova, Deputy Director for Science at the Art Museum.
In general, bronze, in my opinion, is a difficult material, but Zodboev, thanks to the precision of details and painstaking attention to the little things, managed to bring the metal to life and make it believable. For myself, I divided his works into two types: the cute, or family cycle, and the serious ones. “The First Snowflake” and “The First Drip” delighted and moved me. The sly, kind little faces, the funny tails and braids cannot evoke any other feelings. “The Shepherd Boy” charmed me with its lovely lambs, and “Grandmother Embracing Her Grandson,” “Waiting,” and similar works reminded me of the strength and inviolability of family values.
But if everything in the works listed above was more or less clear, then in the “serious” ones it was the opposite. Everyone saw something of their own, interpreted and explained it in their own way. Thus, in my presence, “Watering Place” sparked debate—a quiver of arrows and a bow smoothly turning into the muzzle of a horse, pressed against the base. Some saw in this a comparison of the swiftness and speed of ancient weapons and the animal; others, based on the title, concluded that “strength lies in strength, but for it to appear, a source is needed.” Or perhaps the author meant both, or something entirely different…
“The author is a genius,” said some; “A meeting with Zodboev’s sculptures is akin to flying over the Buryat steppe, the plasticity of the sculptures is akin to nature itself,” “the great depth of the works, the special charm in the pieces,” wrote others, and no one even hinted at disappointment from a “close acquaintance with Buryat culture.”