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Radical Artists Scream Out the Naked Truth

The latest show at the Ridzhina Gallery looks as if the artists staged their own revolution, a quest for the genre farthest from the feel-good images of Socialist Realism. And they have succeeded: Assaulted by exhibits like screaming, tar-covered heads, viewers are not likely to come away uplifted.

The Moscow Times. Tuesday, October 4, 1994 (Вторник, 4 октября 1994)

Radical Artists Scream Out the Naked Truth
By Jeff Grocott

For Ridzhina Gallery curator Anatoly Osmolovsky, however, presenting these images by what he calls "the most radical artists on the Moscow scene" is part of his duty as an artist. "As Lenin said," he chuckled, apparently pleased at co-opting the demagogue's words, "the duty of the artist is to hold a mirror to reality."
The reality reflected at the Ridzhina is grim indeed. One of Osmolovsky's own creations, "Beetleberry Fields Forever," shows a naked infant girl with her head in a vise.

An oil by another artist depicts writhing naked bodies performing a ritualistic dance in the flicker of a television set, and another shows hazy figures shooting heroin in the blue light of television and computer screens.

The Ridzhina Gallery's current exhibit is titled (take a deep breath first): "Insolent, Heartless, Rude, Paranoid, Ungrateful, Animalistic, Drugged Out, Strange, Poverty-Stricken, Beaten Down by Ideology, Careeristic, Naive, Fashionable, Cruel, Fake, Unfriendly, Insane and Stubborn. " Everything about the show is calculated to shock, aggravate, agitate.

Entering the gallery, the visitor is pinned by the glare of three 1, 000-watt spotlights. Osmolovsky said the light symbolizes the traumatic experience of birth.

By recreating that moment, he said, visitors are born into the light of the exhibits "Insolent, Heartless and Rude" world. "The light blinds us and we don't see the works of the exhibit," he explained. "Just as mass media — propaganda and advertising — blinds us from the world around us."

"The key word that defines the artists here is 'resistance': against stereotypes, narrow-mindedness, money, corruption, crime, drug addiction, prostitution, " Osmolovsky said.

Yet these are the very themes that the works exploit. Osmolovsky said that the artists' best means of taking a stand against the uncomfortable and often suppressed worlds of violence and aggression is to drag that world into the naked light.
The most arresting piece in the exhibit is Tanya Khengstler's grouping of three severed heads, each piece slightly larger than life and covered with black, bubbling creosote. Into each of the heads the artist has fitted a small video monitor. Recorded scenes flicker from the screens cut into each forehead or featureless face.

Khengstler dubs the first head "War Man." An orange fire crackles on War Man's small screen, while the sound of applause emanates from the head's tinny speaker.

The second head is called the "Always-Moving-Nowhere Man." The video, accompanied by the hum of a burnt-out muffler, conveys an endless drive down a deserted road.

The final and most disturbing head, called "Food Man," shows a pair of hands delivering a sinewy piece of meat to a pair of grease-smeared lips. While the mouth chews and smacks and sucks the dripping fingers, the head emits a high, grinding wail that sounds like pigs being led to the slaughter, though Khengstler says it's actually a flock of screaming crows.

Together the heads make up what Khengstler calls the "Three Demons of Modernity" — gluttony, restlessness and violence.
Overwhelmingly, the artists take their materials and inspiration from the worlds of industry, technology and mass media.
"The artist transforms this visual information," Osmolovsky said, "but he adds different shades — funny or horrible or aggressive — and arrives upon a deconstruction of reality."

What sort of reaction does Osmolovsky hope to evoke among his visitors? The curator said the ideal reaction would be "to go out-of-your-mind crazy after the exhibition."

Or, you could buy one of the pieces, all of which are for sale. But who would choose to decorate a living room with a screaming, carnivorous, tar-covered head? "It's not my area of competence," said Osmolovsky.

"Insolent, Heartless, Rude, Paranoid, Ungrateful, Animalistic, Drugged Out, Strange, Poverty-Stricken, Beaten Down by Ideology, Careeristic, Naive, Fashionable, Cruel, Fake, Unfriendly, Insane and Stubborn" appears at the Ridzhina Gallery, which is located at 36 Myasnit-skaya Ulitsa, until Oct. 24. The opening hours are daily from noon to 7 P. M., closed Sunday and Monday. Tel. 921-1613. Nearest metros: Chistiye Prudy, Turgenevskaya.

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12/02/2015
Artist’s Talk: Anatoly Osmolovsky

Artist’s Talk: Anatoly Osmolovsky

27 Feb 20156:30 pm | Nash & Brandon Rooms | £8.00 to £10.00

Book Tickets

Russian artist, writer and theorist Anatoly Osmolovsky delivers a lecture examining the history of Russian Actionism and its value system. Osmolovsky began his career as a writer in the (then) Soviet Union and has been engaged in radical publishing and collective art-making throughout his career. The artist was involved with the Radek Community of the 1990s and early 2000s, collectivising Moscow Actionist-inspired artists who made a number of key public protest performances. Osmolovsky lead the younger artists in actions like Barricades (1998) and Against Everyone (1999), for which the group stormed the Lenin mausoleum, unfurling a banner with the titular words printed in large letters. Osmolovsky has since founded the independent art school Institute BAZA (2012).

Post Pop: East Meets West

26 November 2014 - 23 February 2015

Post Pop: East Meets West The exhibition brings together 250 works by 110 artists from China, the Former Soviet Union, Taiwan, the UK and the USA in a comprehensive survey celebrating Pop Art's legacy. Post Pop: East Meets West examines why of all the twentieth century's art movements, Pop Art has had such a powerful influence over artists from world regions that have had very different and sometimes opposing ideologies.

The exhibition celebrates the art being produced in these four distinct regions since the heyday of Pop, and presents them in relation to each other through the framework of six themes: Habitat; Advertising and Consumerism; Celebrity and Mass Media; Art History; Religion and Ideology; Sex and the Body.

Mike Nelson selects from the V-A-C collection:
Again, more things (a table ruin)

Known for his atmospheric, immersive installations British artist Mike Nelson (b. 1967) transforms the gallery with sculptures drawn from the V-A-C collection.

The space, with a rough wooden floor and mass of modelled figures, is suggestive of an artist’s studio, but it is filled with sculptures of the body by some of the 20th century’s greatest artists.

Displayed on this common ground, Constantin Brancusi’s The First Cry (1917) dissolves the human form into elliptical shapes, and Alberto Giacometti’s Femme Debout (1957) elongates a woman’s body into abstraction. While contemporary artist Pawel Althamer’s depiction of three figures around a campfire becomes a focal point around which the other sculptures – by artists including Petr Galadzhev and Anatoly Osmolovsky - seem to be gathered.The display highlights the V-A-C collection, Moscow, as part of the Whitechapel Gallery’s programme of opening up rarely seen collections from around the world.

The publication for this exhibition will available from the end of September. More (press-release)

Thomas Brambilla gallery is proud to announce on Saturday 31 March 2012 the opening of the
group show Blind hole, with William Anastasi, Lucio Fontana, Udomsak Krisanamis, Anatoly
Osmolovsky, Nathan Peter, Grayson Revoir.

31/03/2012 – 04/06/2012
Opening: Saturday 31 March 2012 h.18.30.
Opening hours: Tuesday - Saturday h.14:00-19:00.

Thomas Brambilla
Via Casalino 25
24121 Bergamo Italia
Ph: +39 035 247418
www.thomasbrambilla.com
info@thomasbrambilla.com

07/07/2011
Ostalgia VIP Preview Invite

New Museum will present “Ostalgia,” an exhibition that brings together the work of more than fifty artists from twenty countries across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Republics. Contesting the format of a conventional geographical survey, the exhibition will include works produced by Western European artists who have depicted the reality and the myth of the East.

The exhibition takes its title from the German word ostalgie, a term that emerged in the 1990s to describe a sense of longing and nostalgia for the era before the collapse of the Communist Bloc. Twenty years ago, a process of dissolution began, leading to the break-up of the Soviet Union and of many other countries that had been united under communist governments. From the Baltic republics to the Balkans, from Central Europe to Central Asia, entire regions and nations were reconfigured, their constitutions rewritten, their borders redrawn. “Ostalgia” looks at the art produced in and about some of these countries, many of which did not formally exist two decades ago. Mixing private confessions and collective traumas, the exhibition traces a psychological landscape in which individuals and entire societies negotiate new relationships to history, geography, and ideology.

2010-10-16

Fotoreportažas iš Rusijos šiuolaikinio meno projekto parodos „Estetika VS Informacija“ atidarymo (paroda veiks iki lapkričio 14 d.)...

Презентация и обсуждение первого номера журнала "БАЗА" состоится 12 сентября в 20.00 в книжном магазине "Гилея" по адресу: Тверской бульвар, 9. Вход свободный.

Уважаемые участники круглого стола, к сожалению я не могу принять участие в обсуждении, так как в этот момент нахожусь в поезде Москва-Вильнюс. Будучи первым обладателем премии Кандинского мне, конечно, не безразлична судьба этой в высшей мере благотворной инициативы, потому я предлагаю вашему вниманию собственные соображения.

Газета «Коммерсантъ» № 180 (4480) от 29.09.2010

Выставка "Модерникон" счастливо соединила деньги олигархов с креативностью художников.

Журнал о современном искусстве БАЗА, № 1 В сборнике публикация центрального эссе немецкого философа Гарри Леманна «Авангард сегодня». Подборка статей и лекций Клемента Гринберга. Новый поэтический цикл поэта Дмитрия Пименова. Полиграфические художественные проекты С.Огурцова и С.Шурипы. А так же аналитические статьи современных российских художников по теме «Произведение искусства».

23 сентября–27 февраля,Выставка «Модерникон.Современное искусство из России», Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Турин,Италия) Этаблированный фонд с шикарным выставочным залом Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Турин, Италия) и новый российский фонд «Виктория — Искусство быть современным» (Москва) показывают выставку русских художников сегодняшнего дня, кураторами которой выступили Франческо Бонами (художественный директор фонда) и Ирене Кальдерони. Выставка исходит из гипотезы (навеянной идеями Анатолия Осмоловского), согласно которой русское искусство раньше имело радикальную и провокационную эстетику, а ныне вступило в новую фазу своего развития, где прямое действие уступило место более эстетическому подходу.

23/09/2010
Печатные издания Радек
Поступили в продажу печатные издания группы Радек
Read more…

13/09/2010
«Тупые, наверное. Книжек не читают»

Ирина Постникова /03 сентября 2010

Художник, куратор, философ Анатолий Осмоловский политике никогда не был чужд. Более того, всегда считал себя оппозиционером — и власть публично критиковал. Тем не менее, месяц назад Осмоловский поучаствовал в молодежном форуме «Селигер», чем изрядно всех удивил. Сам он, впрочем, считает, что степень его оппозиционности от пребывания среди прокремлевских активистов не уменьшилась. Потому что не контекст красит человека, а человек — контекст.

ММ: Анатолий, мне интересно, как начиналась Ваша творческая деятельность?

АО: Я сам из Москвы, начинал как литератор, как поэт. В 17-18 лет, когда здесь началась перестройка и была объявлена свобода и гласность, я читал стихи в публичных местах, на улице. Но дело в том, что российский литературный круг в интеллектуальном смысле достаточно примитивен, и довольно быстро меня и моих друзей эта деятельность перестала удовлетворять. Постепенно я стал смещаться в область перформанса, а потом и изобразительного искусства.

Во время летнего путешествия по Уралу мы – я, Александр Липницкий и Светлана Баскова – проездом посетили Свияжский Успенский собор. Собор этот известен сохранившимися фресками 16 века. В России совсем не много сохранившихся фресок 16 века. За исключением Ферапонтова монастыря кое-где сохранились небольшие фрагменты, да и то в крайне плохом состоянии. Фрески Успенского собора сохранились в большом объеме. Качество фресок выдающееся. В некоторых фрагментах видны отголоски «дионисиевого» письма.

Radical Artists Scream Out the Naked Truth

Периоды творчества

Post Pop: East Meets West

Mike Nelson selects from the V-A-C collection: Again, more things (a table ruin)

Mike Nelson selects from the V-A-C collection:
Again, more things (a table ruin)