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Russian
Contemporary Art
Sergei Shutov - Ñåðãåè Øóòîâ
Sergei
Shutov was one of the artists chosen in 2001 to represent Russia
at the Venice Biennale of contemporary art. He usually works with
video and mixed media. At the Biennale, he made an impressive installation
in the Russian Pavilion, 'Abacus'. It constituted of 40 automated,
praying figures, all dressed in the same black robes. They were
kneeling, bowing to the ground and reciting prayers from different
religions and in different languages. As they were reciting, the
texts they were saying was shown on television screens in the corners
of the room.
Alexander Brener - Àëåêñàíäð Áðåíåð
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Brener,
Date, Performance on Pushkin square, Moscow, 1994.
photo©Artinfo
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Brener,
the First Glove, Performance on Red Square, Moscow, 1995.
photo©Artinfo
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Brener,
A Man in a Lather, Action at Moscow Cont. Art Centre, 1994.
photo©Artinfo
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Brener
is against the market of contemporary art. For him, the most important
is to act. 'One shouldn't only write poems, they should be shouted'.
In his first actions, he enforced himself to show the inability
of contemporary artists.
For example he met with his wife on a winter frosty day on the busy
Pushkin square and they tried to make love together in public. But
he shouted 'it doesn't work! Nothing works for contemporary artists!
only for Jeff Koons and Chichulina...'
He went to Pushkin's museum of Fine Arts in Moscow and shited in
front of Van Gogh paintings -- to show how impressed he was. He
was ruining conferences. He once went half naked in winter in front
of the Kremlin and called Eltsin to fight.
And it was him who, in January 1997, while visiting Stadejlik museum
in Amsterdam, graffitied with a green paintball spray, a dollar
sign "$" on Malevich's painting 'Suprematism'. A big green dollar
sign on a white cross on a white background. Malevich's painting,
for Brener, was a symbol of art business and all the people involved
in it: critics, museums, art collectors, gallerists and artists
themselves.
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He
hates authority, power of money and sees museums like 'the
bastion of cultural power'. He expressed his ideas through
the $ graffiti and spent years in a Dutch prison because of
that.There he wrote the book 'obosani pistolet' where he tells
his beliefs and summarizes all his actions.He talks about
democratic art. He dreams that people would go on the streets
and protest in silence or in laughter against the 'criminal
power' that governs.
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He
believes one should express one's beliefs by 'simple, funny,
fast, clean hearted, naive actions'. He imagines 'a mass of
people gathering on the Red Square and silently picking their
nose, then the fat, boring government would shake and fall'.
He was born in 1957 in Kazakstan, he hated school, liked to
lie under the sun, and to make love in weird places like in
a library, on a bench in a park... |
In
1978 he studied philology in St Petersburg, got married then emigrated
to Israel in 1981. He started making some actions there with his
wife-For example once they hanged big yellow banners, with black
digits painted on them, in the main street of Tel-Aviv on Shabbat's
day. It reminded a bit of the yellow numbers on the uniform of concentration
camps prisoners. It was hanged down by the police. Brener says he
'fucked' the police in every country where he was.
In 1992, he came to live in Moscow. He fast became a conspicuous
artist in the little circle of Moscow contemporary art. He was coming
to poetic lectures and was reading about sexual illnesses. He found
artists were too worried by carrier and money.
For him art is like an orgasm, an ejaculation of energy, an amazing
ritual.
The last thing he was up to - setting a revolution in Mexico.
Oleg Kulik - Îëåã Êóëèê
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Kulik,
Eclipse, 1994,
photo©artist from Artinfo
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Kulik,
Reservoir dog,Performance, 30 march 1995, photo©Artinfo
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Kulik,
from series Rural Russia, 1994,
photo©artist from Artinfo |
Kulik
used to go in public places in Moscow and act like a dog. For example
he would stand in front of a big shop, naked, and bark so much that
it would prevent people from getting in. The performances were filmed,
and always ended by the police taking him away. Often the people
watching the crazy artist would play his game and treat him like
a dog, but he would never let himself be stroked. So it gave a very
absurd and violent representation of communication. Once he stayed
for some weeks in a wooden box in a gallery, acting like a dog in
a cage. A kind of modern response to Joseph Beys, who stayed in
a gallery locked in for the time of the exhibition with a coyote
Kulik also milked a real dog in Rijina gallery.
He wrote : "I am an artist possessing a powerful projectional
will. My projects are just as interesting as they are dangerous
or repugnant to society. When I am able to materialize the phantoms
of my imagination through my knowledge of the mechanisms of reality,
I experience supreme bliss which I try to share with my admirers
and connoisseurs."
Nowadays you will probably not encounter him any more behaving like
an enraged dog while walking on the Red square, he seems to have
gotten tired of it now that he is very famous and exhibited last
summer in The Biennale of Venice. Now, he makes big paintings of
jungle animals, maybe they sell better than his disturbing performances...
AES Group - AEC
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| AES,
Muslim project, photo© from Guelman
Gallery |
AES,
Outlets. From the project "Body Space", 1995,
Coloured photo, wood, gauze photo©artinfo |
AES,
Family portrait in the interior, 1995,
photo© artists from artinfo |
AES
is a group of three artists: two men and one woman.
They make photos and installations. In the same style
as the above 'Family portrait in the interior', where the artists
open their throats to pose as much from the inside as from the outside
for the portrait..some of their other photos show businessmen litterarily
holding their guts in front of them in their hands.
In some art fairs their stand was exactly like a travel agency stand,
with huge posters of the main sights in different capital
cities. Except that in every picture a muslim element was integrated,
like here above, the statue of Liberty is wearing a veil. An other
photo shows a view of Paris with the Eiffel Tower at the foreground
and at the background Mosques and Taj Mahal-like buildings growing
like mushrooms. It's called the 'muslim project'. A view of the
future ?
In 2000 they exhibited a round red wooden arena, in different
museums around the world. Inside the arena were ten large photos
of girls. All of them were teenagers, from Russia, all dressed with
a football tee-shirt. At the entrance of the arena was a board where
was written that half of those girls are actually emprisonned for
crime of murder. The game is to fill in a paper and to choose among
the ten girls which ones are the criminals. Their crimes are explained
in detail, for example one of those girls killed her step-father
with a kitchen knive. After playing the weird game of denouncing
who must be the criminals, only by examining the face of the ten
girls, the spectators were invited to leave a donation for the criminal
girls. But never the answer of whom is who was told.
Check out their website at http://www.aes-group.org
it's nice.
Avdey Ter-Oganyan
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| Ter-Oganyan,
'Some Problems of Restoring Contemporary Works of Art',
1993, Porcelain, glue, cement © artist from Artinfo
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Ter-Oganyan,
Andy Wharol,'Marilyn'' and 'Campbell Soup'
from series 'Pictures for the museum', 1989, oil on
canvas©artist from Artinfo |
Ter-Oganian's first art works were parodies of Duchamp,
for example he exhibited a men's urinal, where the visitors where
actually invited to piss inside. In autumn 1994, he climbed the US
Embassy and hanged a parody of Jasper John's USA Flag painting instead
of the real flag. He didn't like the market of art and tried to make
things that wouldn't sell.
And he was against taboos. One day there was a big contemporary art
fair in Manezh gallery in Moscow. All the galleries had stands where
they were showing their favorite artists and selling their stuff.
He installed a stand also, were he also had a lot of images: cheap
Russian reproductions of Orthodox icons that are sold in the streets
for a few Rubbles. He stood at his stand and proposed people to buy
an icon and to break it, or to buy an icon and to have it broken by
the artist.There was a lot of polemic about this action and Ter-Oganian
was sued, now he left Russia. You can read some articles about him
on Tv Gallery
website.
Oleg Mavromati
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| Mavromati,recto
and verso of the invitation to his performance 'Citizen X' on
22 september 2001 at Guelman
Gallery, Moscow. |
He crucified himself on an X cross in Marat Guelman's
gallery in Moscow, at 18.00 pm on 22nd September 2001, and he does
it often. When a journalist asked him why, he said: "what can
I do if that's the only way how an artist now can get attention on
his work.."He also speaks about revolution.
On
the day of his performance,there was a 2 meter high wooden X cross
in the Gallery, like the cross on the flyer. Oleg enters the room
wearing cut jeans, bare torso, a strong and big man, full of life.
His legs have wounds of previous performances. The room is becoming
full with people, art critics, journalists, artists, students...
Oleg moves back against the cross and a guy steps from the crowd
with a large roll of adhesive tape in the hand and starts to tie
him up to the cross, first scotching his stomach to the middle of
the X. Between the violent tearing sounds of the tape Oleg says
:" I made this performance in Hungary, now it is the continuation".
And while they are attaching his open arms and legs to the branches
of the X cross, he keeps on talking.
Once he's well festened, he calls another man in, who walks out
of the crowd a hammer and nails in his hand. The public steps forward
to see better, everybody is talking, or commenting, it's very noisy
: "he makes this performance often, he has piercings in the hands
and feet..." I try to see the piercings in his hands but i don't
manage, they look plain.
The scotcher unscotches Oleg's right hand and the piercer starts
to nail it to the wooden cross. The sound of the hammer makes the
whole situation suddenly feel very real.
I'm realizing that this performer will be crucified in front of
us, I feel it's a bit crazy.
Oleg shouts as a drop of blood rolls along his arm. Then his second
hand is nailed, and his both feet. They unscotch him completely
and he's only holding there against the cross with the nails. His
breathing is loud. I wish there would be silence, but the crowd
is ever so noisy, doesn't stop commenting, talking, moving.. I'm
hurting for him, I wonder why he does this, why we are letting him
do it.
He says : " You see what contemporary artists have to do nowadays
? " And he moans because of the pain he must feel : " You see what
the public is waiting for ? " Everybody stares, some people take
pictures, videos.
It seems like an eternity before Oleg Mavromati calls the guys to
unnail him. More blood leeks from his hands. The scene is like a
live biblical 'descent of the cross'. It reminds of all those paintings
showing the people holding the body of the dead Christ, the feeling
of compassion. The performer is accompanied to a small back room
by the guys who attached, nailed and detached him. Drops of blood
trace his path..
Many people leave. In the gallery a girl is using the back of the
flyers to take prints of the drops of blood on the floor, then she's
installing them on one corner of the room.
The ritual seems to continue also in the back room, I peep in and
see Oleg Mavromati lying on the floor. A girl dressed in black is
cleaning the blood from his legs with a wet cloth. She applies it
on him, rinses then rings it out, and applies it on him again. His
body is strong opposed to his hands and feet which look so fragile
and bloody now. Another person rolls a white cloth around the wounded
limbs, covering the stigmas.
His art has such an impact on his personal life. He'll feel the
pain from the crucifixion for long. Some journalists come in and
take an interview. They talk with him about art as a way of initiating
revolutions in how people see things.
I feel he shows in a very powerful way how life can be violent,
how one can be crazy to the point of hurting oneself sometimes.
I ask him if he likes doing this and he says " Yes, I like
it, that's why I do it, but don't think I'm a masochist in my private
life ".
And the installation continues: someone put some fresh raisins in
the middle of the cross.
Lyudmila Gorlova
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| Gorlova,
from the series 'how do I love' 1997. photo©XL
Gallery |
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Her
10 meter long photo series 'how do I love' shows her roaming in
her flat in every position: lying on her bed, sitting on the floor
of the kitchen, cutting her hair very short, wearing too much lipstick
in the bath, cleaning the walls. One sentence is associated to each
picture, for example on one photo where she's wearing a mud mask,
she wrote 'I'm feeling silly'.
She also made videos of weddings. You can also see her work at www.xlgallery.com.
Researched and written by Celine Smith from The Solvents Live Art collective.
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