ART

Southern California will get a taste of Soviet vanguard art March 25, when the Dorothy Goldeen Gallery in Santa Monica opens a six-week show of works by Igor Kopystianski and Svetlana Kopystianskaya. The couple were darlings of Sotheby’s ground-breaking auction last July in Moscow, where rock star Elton John bought one work by each of the two artists for a total of $151,360. (The couple’s token take from the auction was about $200,000, 60% of the hammer price.) In the Goldeen show, Kopystianski will exhibit works from two series: “Restored Paintings,” oils on canvas that are manipulated to appear old and worn, and “Interiors,” three-dimensional constructions made of painted canvases. Kopystianskaya will exhibit oil and tempera paintings covered with narratives in Cyrillic script, intended as an ironic comment on the dominant role of literature in Russian education and culture.