leonid tishkov

Apokryfos

2011-12-31T01:28:00.000-08:00

Apokryfos. The Annunciation, Christmas, Golgotha, installations
in National Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow,
2003-2004.

Private Moon in Taiwan

2011-12-23T10:41:00.000-08:00

The Private Moon installation in Dream Mall,
Kaohsiung, via DropBox
from December 2011 until February 2012
Light Up! exhibition

Republic of the Moon

2011-12-22T10:55:00.000-08:00

Republic of the Moon exhibition
in FACT Liverpool

The Moon and Clown

2011-12-14T10:12:00.000-08:00

Game over - show must go on, installation, 2011,
clown, manege, sawdust, steel, LED, fragments
of film Koyaanisqatsi in PL gallery, Moscow
from 16th December

Two Moons

2011-12-10T11:43:00.000-08:00

Private Moon in the Arctic by Leonid Tishkov, 2010

Russian Cosmos

2011-12-09T12:15:00.000-08:00

Exhibition Russian Cosmos in Castello Di Rivoli
Museum of Contemporary Art, Turin, Italy
from 16th December

Stills from video Snow Angel, 1998

Moon in Cage

2011-12-08T11:30:00.000-08:00

Moon in Cage, light object: steel, acryl glas, LED, salt, 2009
in PL Gallery, Moscow on "Circus!" exhibition from 16th December

Private Moon on a Maple Path

2011-11-28T00:39:00.000-08:00

Private Moon installtion on an exhibition Light Up 2011
in National Cheng-Chi University's campus
in Pavilion on the Maple Path

Dabloids new paintings

2011-11-22T11:43:00.000-08:00

Dabloids paintings, 2011, 130 x 100 cm.,
acrylic on canvas, on Derelict Utopias

Dabloid Suit

2011-11-20T09:03:00.000-08:00

Dabloid Suit, felt, flax, hand print, 2011

Ladomir installation in Berlin

2011-11-17T00:14:00.000-08:00

Ladomir installation on Derelict Utopias at Jiri Svestka Gallery

Private Moon in Berlin

2011-11-15T05:11:00.000-08:00

Private Moon installation on the Derelict Utopias in Jiri Svestka Gallery from 11th November until 28th January

Dabloids in Berlin

2011-11-13T05:20:00.000-08:00

Leonid Tishkov Derelict Utopias

2011-10-29T00:07:00.000-07:00

Galerie Jiri Svestka Berlin
11. November 2011 – 7. Januar 2012
Potsdamer Straße 81c
10785 Berlin
November 12, 2011 - January 7, 2012

Leonid Tishkov’s social and artistic project DABLOIDS took its origin right after the fall of the Sowjet Union. Created in the 1990s, at a time when Russia was on the threshold to a new society, the project had to stay an unrealised utopia. Now the Dabloids have come to Berlin: Comics of Propaganda-Dablus and the installation Factory of Dabloids which took off as an action in 2009 in the Kamvolnyj Kombinat in Jekaterinenburg, Ural (a former fabric factory). During this one-week performance, Tishkov paid the dismissed factory workers to produce dabloids. The so called dabloids are beings of our consciousness. Their form reminds of a little head on a foot in red – the colour of life. Dabloids can be understood as symbols for the burden of our personal experiences, views and prejudices which are part of all human beings. Some of our dabloids are to be found worldwide, some are just local. They are representative of all symbols and opinions referring to homeland, nationality or religion. Changing from human to human, from country to country and continent to continent, dabloids are an expression of language, history and social identity. They are an ultimative symbol and have the power to penetrate our consciousness. This is why it is the most important task to banish them from our heads.
LADOMIR is a project of the year 2006, devoted to an important futurologist and poet of the 20th century, Velimir Chlebnikov, as well as other vanguards: Artist Kasimir Malevitch, scientists Ziolkovsky and Tchishevsky and finally the cosmologist Nikolai Federov.
In the year 1921 Chlebnikov wrote the utopic poem Ladomir about a world of perfect harmony bringing together people of different upbringings, religions and longings. United for a better future they build a new shiny world. At the same time, the inhabitants of Ladomir are prototypes for the chairmen of the “Council of Earth”.
Leonid Tishkov kneaded these people – they consist of Chlebnikov-mass (Chleb means bread in Russian). In the centre of the installation stands the town “Sunnystan”. Consisting of Malevitch’s “Architectones”, Tatlin’s towers and Popov’s aerials, the town is surmounted by the golden nest house, planes and “flying Tatlins”. It is a fragile, poetic world which stayed a futuristic dream after the Russian Revolution. Today, macaroni is seen just as food and not as the shining rays of the future. But even if this world seems derelict and abandoned, its volatileness may remind us of a possibility of another, ideal world.
The third utopia relates to a project from the year 2003. From far the light of the PRIVATE MOON radiate into the winter sky and tell of a moon than fell from heaven. A visual poem about loneliness as well as being a response to Chesterton who claimed that a personal religion is impossible – as is a personal sun or a personal moon.
The exhibition finishes in a long corridor with embrasures. This is where we meet the last derelict utopia: The CRYSTALL STOMACH OF THE ANGEL. It is at the same time the most personal utopia of the artist. Told in the form of videos and drawings, this utopia might be even more touching than the unrealised dreams of whole nations.

Verlassene Utopien: Dabloide und Ladomir

Das Projekt «DABLOIDE» des Moskauer Künstlers Leonid Tishkov nahm seinen Ursprung vor mehr als 20 Jahren. Es fing alles mit Comics und Alben an, später kamen noch Bücher und ein Theaterstück dazu, dann kamen Objekte, Videos, Installationen, Performances und schließlich die Gründung des Verlags und der Gesellschaft «Dablus» zur Propaganda der dabloiden Ideen. Ausgestellt wurden die «Dabloiden» in Museen weltweit, u.a. dem Museum für Zeitgenössische Kunst in Caracas, Block Museum und im Nasher Museum (USA), dem Zentrum für Zeitgenössische Kunst Fargfabriken in Stockholm. Das MoMA in New York hat Werke von Leonid Tishkov als erste Cartoon-Arbeiten europäischer Kunst in seine Sammlung aufgenommen.

Jetzt sind die Dabloiden nach Berlin gekommen: Comic-Bilder von «Propaganda-Dablus» sowie die Installation «Fabrik der Dabloiden», die als Aktion 2009 auf dem Kammgarn Kombinat in Jekaterinburg am Ural entstanden ist. Dabei hat der Künstler die entlassenen Arbeiter dafür bezahlt, dass sie Dabloide herstellten. Dabloide sind Lebewesen unseres Bewusstseins, in der Form an einen roten Fuß mit einem kleinen Kopf erinnernd. Rot ist die Farbe des Lebens. Dabloide sind ein Symbol für die Lasten an Erfahrungen, Sichtweisen oder Vorurteilen, die jeder Mensch mit sich trägt. Wir schleppen sie mit uns herum, unter dem Arm oder auf den Schultern, wohin wir auch gehen und wen immer wir treffen. Ein Teil unserer Dabloide sind weltweit verbreitet, andere sind eher lokal anzutreffen. Dabloide beinhalten alle unsere Symbole und Ideen: Heimat, Kanzler, Nationalität, Religion, Parteien, Gagarin, Big Mac, Nationale Front, Fahne auf dem Reichstag. Dabloide sind das ultimative Symbol, das für alle Symbole unserer Welt stellvertretend ist.

Sie unterscheiden sich von Mensch zu Mensch, von Land zu Land, von Kontinent zu Kontinent — sie sind Ausdruck von Sprache, Geschichte und sozialer Identität. Dabloide stehen exemplarisch für alle Dinge und erlauben es den Menschen, ihr Bewusstsein zu durchdringen und den ewigen Reigen der Cliches und Symbole im Kopf aufzuhalten. Die Dabloide aus unserem Bewusstsein zu verbannen ist die wichtigste Aufgabe des modernen Menschen. Das sozial-künstlerische Projekt der «Dabloiden» ist in den 1990er Jahren entstanden, zu einer Zeit als Russland sich auf der Schwelle zu einer neuen Gesellschaft befand; leider blieb das Projekt eine unrealisierte Utopie.

LADOMIR ist ein Projekt aus dem Jahr 2006 und dem großen Futuristen und Dichter des 20. Jahrhunderts gewidmet, Welimir Chlebnikow, sowie weiteren genialen russischen Avantgardisten: dem Künstler Kasimir Malewitsch, den Wissenschaftlern Ziolkovsky und Tschischevsky, und schließlich dem Philosophen und Kosmologen Nikolai Fedorov. Leonid Tishkov hat die Installation aus den einfachsten Dingen geschaffen, ohne die allerdings die Menschheit nicht vorstellbar wäre – Brot und Makkaroni.

Im Jahr 1921 verfasste Chlebnikow das Gedicht «Ladomir», einen Aufsatz über die Utopie einer Welt von vollständigen Harmonie, in der Menschen unterschiedlicher Hautfarbe, mit unterschiedlichen Sehnsüchten und Religionen zusammen leben. Für eine bessere Zukunft vereinen sie sich und erschaffen eine neue glänzende Welt. Die Menschen von «Ladomir» sind Prototypen von Vorsitzenden des Weltrates. Sie sind aus Brot geknetet: der Künstler sagt, sie bestehen aus Chlebnikow-Masse (auf Russisch bedeutet «chleb» – Brot. Im Zentrum der Installation befindet sich die Stadt «Sonnestan». Sie besteht aus Malewitschs «Architektonen», Tatlins Türmen und Popovs Rundfunkmasten. Sie wird überragt von Konstantin Ziolkovskys Röhre für Weltraumfahrten, dem Goldenen Nest-Haus, Flugzeugen und «Fliegenden Tatlins». Das ist eine zerbrechliche poetische Welt, deren Projekt nach der Russischen Revolution ein futuristischer Wunschtraum blieb: die Menschen sehen in Makkaroni nur Nahrung und nicht die leuchtenden Strahlen der Zukunft. Anfang des 21. Jahrhunderts brauchen die Menschen solche Utopien nicht mehr. Doch obwohl sie verlassen und aufgegeben wie Schiffe in der Luft schweben, erinnert uns ihre vergängliche Grösse an die Möglichkeit einer ganz anderen Welt, einer grossherzigen, von Glück und Gleichheit erfüllter Idealwelt. Am Ende der Ausstellung, in einem langen Korridor voller Schiessscharten begegnen wir noch einer weiteren unerfüllten Utopie.

Der Kristall-Magen des Engels: das ist die persönliche Utopie des Künstlers. Dieser Traum vom Fliegen gründet sich in seiner Biographie, seiner Kindheit im Ural, seinem Medizinstudium, seiner Begegnung mit dem Engel. Sie wird in Buch- und Videoform erzählt und mag noch viel rührender sein, als die unerfüllten Träume ganzer Völker.

Set design of the Deep Sea Divers play

2011-10-28T13:36:00.000-07:00

DeepSeaDivers drawings for the play, 1998, paper, watercolor, ink

Apfelmensch

2011-10-26T02:53:00.000-07:00

This autumn I went to the village of Uvarovka in the west of the Moscow Region, where I have a house, which I’d bought by a lucky chance there from the local old-timers. Some apple-trees were still alive in the orchard. Under one of them, the oldest and the most crooked but still overgrown with “Antonovka” apples, I found a rusted German helmet with a bullet hole. Huge, bright apples were scattered around everywhere filling the garden with their fragrance. I gathered some apples into the helmet, brought
them into the house and pour them onto the bed. There were so many apples I kept gathering them and placing them on the bedcover. Suddenly I noticed something lying on the bed. That was Apfelmensch. Perhaps a German soldier died under this apple tree during World War II and they buried him right there, in a shallow grave under the apple tree. The remains of his body have enriched the garden soil and thus he has been feeding the appletree and its apples for many years now. So each apple contained a particle of that man. I gathered the apples into a basket, wrapping each one with dry moss and then waited till it was time to carry Apfelmensch to his homeland so that at least a small part of him, these tiny apple seeds return to his native soil where he had once been born as a human being.

Lepnid Tishkov,2006

Private Moon in Taiwan

2011-09-24T11:29:00.000-07:00

http://artist.nccu.edu.tw/2011fall/park_exhibit_leonid.html

From 7th October until the end of December in NCCU Art & Culture Center, Taipei

Private Moon in Siberia

2011-09-15T10:01:00.000-07:00

Catching the Moon in the Yenisei River

Rest of the Moon in Siberia

2011-09-15T08:17:00.000-07:00

Private Moon installation at great Russian artist Vasily Surikov's house in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, Russia

Dabloid Day in Tula

2011-09-11T23:49:00.000-07:00

Dabloid action in Tula on the Day of the City near Kremlin,
10th September 2011

Star in the Earth

2011-09-07T00:04:00.000-07:00

Star in the Earth, installation: acrylic glass, LED, wooden beams, 1 x 1 x 2 m, 2011 on 9 Museum Biennale in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, Russia

Private Moon in Siberia

2011-09-06T01:14:00.000-07:00

Rising of the Private Moon from the Yenisei River, 9pm, 3th September, 2011, Embankment of the Museum, Krasnoyarsk, 9 Museum Biennale

The Moon de Chirico

2011-09-05T12:58:00.000-07:00

The Moon de Chirico, installation: acrylic glass, LED, rubber hose,

air conditioning,

on 9th Museum Biennale in Krasnoyarsk,Siberia, Russia,
from 2th September until 5th November 2011

Carroll's Closet

2011-08-31T13:07:00.000-07:00

Leonid Tishkov, Carroll"s Closet, installation: human sceleton, slide proection of Lewis Carroll photographs, old children shoes, silk scarf, puppet, apples, woden camera, tripod, at "Arsenal" Contemporary Art Center in Nizhny Novgorod on an exhibition "Illusion",
from 31th Auqust until 23th October

We're Killing Time, Time's Killing Us

2011-08-22T08:03:00.000-07:00

Private Moon in Taipei

2011-08-22T07:25:00.000-07:00

http://www.fubonart.org.tw/veryfunpark2011/exhibition/works25.html

Thank for photos to Jabbar

Light Up in Taipei

2011-07-21T02:22:00.000-07:00

Private Moon installation in Taipei, Taiwan:
Before the openning

Art Sound in RAM museum

2011-06-15T02:34:00.000-07:00

photo by Mario Di Paolo
http://www.radioartemobile.it/

Private Moon in New Zealand

2011-06-03T00:25:00.000-07:00

Rangitoto volcano sleeps away
the moon amazed by its beauty fell on damp shining shore
and I am amazed by the beauty of the Universe
Leonid Tishkov

Photo by Marcus Williams and SP5 Unitec, Auckland , 2011

Blizzard at the Arsenal

2011-05-02T00:53:00.000-07:00

Opening of the 'Blizzard' exhibition, dedicated to winter as an artistic metaphor for Russian life, will take place on the 28th of April in the restored part of the Arsenal building of the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin. Participants of the exhibition – renowned contemporary Russian artists – present their outlook on 'blizzard country', buried underneath deep snow, with mental and social motifs intermingling within.
Artists: Dmitry Gutov, Vadim Zakharov, Collective Actions group, Where Dogs Run art group, Igor Makarevich and Elena Elagina, Provmyza group, The Bluesoup group, Leonid Tishkov, Olga Chernysheva, Sergey Shutov.

Curators: Elena Belova, Alisa Savitskaya

Integrated into one story by common visual link – snow, the artworks displayed in the showroom form a unified winter space, where a mask of formal landscape conceals the special Russian context: natural, historical and socio-cultural environment in which a Russian man is inevitably bound to exist and act. Against the backdrop of the present day reality – impersonal whiteness and cold blizzards - this landscape turns into utopia, territory of metaphysical conflicts, empty of direct and pertinent hints.
The “Blizzard” connotes obscurity and indeterminacy of territory which is almost entirely bereft of linear reactions, distinct cause-effect relations and consecutive reactions, artistic as well as panhuman ones. In endless snow it is difficult to distinguish between reality and recollection, the past and future, archaic archive and futuristic prognosis. At the same time blizzard is repetitive as is never-ending historical cycle, recurring from one year to the next.
THE EXHIBITION’S OPENING: 28th of April 2011 at 19.00.

OPENING HOURS: until the 19th of June 2011, daily from 12.00 till 20.00, except Mondays

CONTACTS: phone +7 (831) 423-57-41, ncca@art.nnov.ru, http://www.ncca.ru/

Snow Angel

2011-04-19T02:01:00.000-07:00

"Snow Angel" video 1999, 8', camera Sergey Tishkov, sound by Michael Khodarevsky, Leonid Tishkov in "The Blizzard" exhibition at Arsenal NCCA in Nizny Novgorod from 27th April

Egg Sun

2011-04-16T02:51:00.000-07:00

The Egg Sun, polishing bronze, 35 cm, 2011

Return of the Prodigal Son, wood, clay, acrilic paint, 2011

Colossus with clay leg, wood, clay, acrilic paint, 2011

On exhibition "Easter at Chekhov's House" in PL Gallery from 26th April until 15th June,
Malaya Dmitrovka, 29

Space rocket crocheted from rags

2011-04-15T11:21:00.000-07:00

The Rocket crocheted for space voyage: old wear, crochet, electric bulb, 2011 at

Krokin Gallery on exhibition "Earth.Cosmos.Gagarin" until 15th May

Photos of Art Works

2011-04-13T23:40:00.000-07:00

Leonid Tishkov Album of Art Works

Nikodemus

2011-04-03T00:10:00.000-07:00

Nikodemus, video, 2000, from Anthology of the Underheaven, 5:50 min, music by Khodarevsky & Shumkov

Snowangel

2011-03-16T00:41:00.000-07:00

Snowangel, video, 1998

Rabat. Neurotic Landscape

2011-03-13T08:48:00.000-07:00

Rabat. Neurotic Landscape, video installation: sand, wooden table, clay, LED, video, music by Ercan Irmak, 2011
on exhibition "To See the Sound" in NCCA, Moscow

Sound of the Ice

2011-03-13T06:09:00.000-07:00

"Drops" from "Sound of the Ice", 2011

"Music of the Ice" from "Sound of the Ice", 2011
on exhibition "Leonid Tishkov. Arctic Diary" in Krokin Gallery

Arctic Diary

2011-03-11T21:50:00.000-08:00

Exhibition Arctic Diary

at Krokin Gallery, Moscow

from 10th March until 10th April

The Knitling

2011-02-21T00:00:00.000-08:00

The Knitling, 2002

The Knitling in Urals mountain (Vyazanik v Uralskykh gorakh), 2002

Palimpsesto

2011-02-13T08:18:00.000-08:00

From Palimpsesto serie,1989, paper, tracing paper, Indian ink, ink, glue

From Palimpsesto serie, 1989, Indian ink, ink, glue

Windows facing within I, 1989, paper, tracing paper, Indian ink, ink, glue, 105 x 77 cm

Windows facing within II, 1989, paper, tracing paper, Indian ink, ink, glue, 105 x 77 cm

Reed hut, 1992, book from Diver's Library, two pages,paper, tracing paper, Indian ink, ink, glue, cardboard, 44 x 31 cm

Gogo, 1990, book from Diver's Library, two pages,tracing paper, 40 x 29 cm

Kaukasus

2011-02-10T13:23:00.000-08:00

Kaukasus, pages from the book, 1990, ink on paper, silver ink on cover

Vodolazes ( Deepsea Divers)

2011-02-09T12:05:00.000-08:00

Vodolazes, 1997, portfolio, color silkscreen, limited edition by HPWI, Alexandria, USA

Le foie en fleurs (Liver in Bloom)

2011-02-08T01:04:00.000-08:00

Le foie en fleurs, 1994, silkscreen, 300 copies, Alaшn Buise edition, Lille, France

http://cdm.reed.edu/cdm4/artbooks/tishkov_liver.php

Private Moon in the Arctic. Magdalene fjord

2011-02-04T13:20:00.000-08:00

Music stones on the Arctic's ice

2011-02-04T13:08:00.001-08:00

Sculptures from bronze

2011-01-29T04:36:00.000-08:00

Rugs of my mother, bronze, acrilic, d 40 cm, 2010

Snowman, bronze, 77 cm, 2009

Deep-sea divers, bronze, rubber hose, electric lamp, 80 cm each, 2009

Sun eclipse

2011-01-04T01:05:00.000-08:00

Sun-moon 11:50 4th January 2011 Moscow

The Little Prince

2011-01-02T02:32:00.000-08:00

The Little Prince, 2010, bronze

Private Moon in the Arctic, 2010

2011-01-01T05:02:00.000-08:00

Private Moon in Paris, 2009

2010-12-26T10:23:00.000-08:00

Solveig. Landscape of My Memory.

2010-12-26T09:34:00.000-08:00

Solveig. Landscape of My Memory, video installation at Nina Lumer Gallery, Milan, until 31 January

Sk(y)ier

2010-12-26T09:04:00.000-08:00

Sk(y)ier, video, 1999
at Nina Lumer Gallery, Milan, until 31 January 2011

The Wish Machine

2010-12-21T11:27:00.000-08:00

Wish Machine, cinetic installation, 2010
on The Little Prince in Moscow show
at PL Gallery, M.Dmitrovka, 29
23 December - 1 March 2011

Exhibition at Nina Lumer Gallery, Milan

2010-12-15T07:33:00.001-08:00

Private moon, 2003, light object, plastic, LED

Sk(y)ier, 1999-2007, video

Solveig. Landscape of My Memory, 2004, video, salt, glass, wood, music of Edvard Grieg

Journey of the Private Moon in Italy

2010-12-06T10:46:00.000-08:00

The Hunting of the Snark

2010-11-28T01:43:00.000-08:00

Portfolio "The Hunting of the Snark" in 500 copies with Leonid Tishkov's 58 illustrations
of 1990, reprint book of Lewis Carroll by 1876 with ill. Henry Holiday, CD with music of Lev Gutovsky and book of texts by Tishkov. Gutovsky and publisher Pavel Rabin. Also 10 copies of the portfolio has original ink pictures of Leonid Tishkov, 2010.

tv culture

Journey of Private Moon in the Arctic

2010-11-20T12:24:00.001-08:00

III Prigov fest: Assemblage Point in NCCA

2010-11-07T01:51:00.000-07:00

Leonid Tishkov
Clasters, installation: old found cloth from artist's family, photographs from family album, video projection of photographs, electric lamps, metal, fan. 2010
NCCA, 6 - 28 November, 2010

Private Moon in Urals

2010-10-13T02:03:00.001-07:00

Private Moon at old Water-cooling tower in the VIZ factory on
First Industrial Biennale in the Urals, Ekaterinburg

Leonid Tishkov, Private Moon, 2003-2011
Mobile Installation. Light box

Private Moon is a visual poetic installation, open for interaction with humans and space. In its unusual position within a landscape, in a stretch of open country, inside some deserted accommodation or water-cooling towers, the artificial moon sheds its light on surrounding objects and offers viewers as they arrive or occasional passers-by a chance to experience the fairytale nature of our existence. When a viewer goes inside the installation, he or she becomes both a subject and an actor in the performance, and enjoys a poetic insight within our prosaic post-industrial reality. Private Moon signifies the return of the romantic project into the topical scope of contemporary art, which could definitely profit from more of the poetic and the
humane. As an added benefit, this project allows everyone who wanders into its story to feel like an artist or a co-author with Leonid Tishkov. The need for such a project is evident in Ekaterinburg, with its industrial landscape, deserted habitats, abandoned spaces, and the lack of the poetic that drives the locals into depression. This is why Private Moon has come to the Urals, bearing a handful of poetry in its silver palm.

Dabloid Production Shop in the Worsted industrial complex, 2009-2010
Installation. Fabric, wadding, photography, posters, video

Private Moon in Frankfurt

2010-10-12T00:49:00.000-07:00

Concert for the Private Moon
on Playing the City II

Multimedia Art Museum Moscow opening

2010-10-10T01:43:00.000-07:00

Sk(y)ier, installation: video, steel, acrilic glass, electric lamps, 1999-2008, collection of MMAM

VOIS CE QUE J'ENTENDS

2010-10-09T11:27:00.001-07:00

VOIS CE QUE J'ENTENDS
24 September - 17 December
at Center Des Arts Enghien-Les-Bains

Vlad Efimov
Vadim Zakharov
Vladimir Tarasov
Leonid Tishkov
NY Group
Generation Z

Plongeurs celestes: installation, 2003

Restauration d'une image de particules de la vie perdue: installation, 2008

Solveig: paysage de ma memoire: installation, 2004

I AM STILL ALIVE

2010-10-03T12:47:00.000-07:00

I AM STILL ALIVE, video projection on a glaicer, Spitsbergen, 2010

PLAYING THE CITY II

2010-08-28T00:14:00.000-07:00

9 September - 29 September 2010

SCHIRN Kusthalle Frankfurt

THE SCHIRN'S "PLAYING THE CITY 2" PROJECT ONCE AGAIN TRANSFORMS CENTRAL FRANKFURT INTO A SHOWPLACE FOR A RANGE OF ACTIONS AND PERFORMANCES

Following last year's success, the exhibition project Playing the City 2 once again presents a wide range of artistic activities in public space, involving the city and its inhabitants in a variety of ways. From 8 to 26 September 2010, central Frankfurt will see new actions taking place daily, from performances to installations to "guerrilla actions". At the heart of the project lies an intense debate about public space and the "participatory turn" within contemporary art. Around 20 collaborative and participatory works are planned, some specially conceived for the project, by Nina Beier, Clarina Bezzola, Julien Bismuth, Clegg & Guttmann, Cosalux, Christoph Faulhaber, For Use / Numen, Swetlana Gerner, Jördis Hille, Christoph von Löw, Josef Loretan, Jan Lotter, Annika Lundgren, Lee Mingwei, Ivan Moudov, Anny and Sibel Öztürk, Paola Pivi, Plural Art Collective feat, Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, Reactor, Annika Ström, Leonid Tishkov, Gavin Turk and Vanja Vukovic. In parallel a project office, the "Zentrale", will be set up in the Schirn's exhibition spaces, from where the project team will pursue its work in public, fine-tuning the website, answering questions on the exhibition, and organising and documenting all the activities. Playing the City 2 can also be followed via the internet, in a digital extension of public space. The website developed for the project, www.playingthecity.de, assembles all the latest videos, texts and visual material, an exhibition calendar and a blog, and will also be networked beyond the physical venues via numerous social media networks. It is thus a catalogue, exhibition forum and platform for discussion all in one.

Playing the City 2 opens up public space as a collective, free arena that can be moulded, that questions its boundaries, and that involves its inhabitants. The site-specific actions take place within a time-limited framework in which they are produced and can be experienced, and in which production and reception are closely connected. The traditional definitions of a work and of its authorship are negated: both terms that have been questioned since the 1960s, not least through action art. Many of the works developed for Playing the City 2 can only be realised through the involvement of the public; whether they are actions that provoke fortuitous street confrontations or sculptures that invite use. But at the very least they are intended to create a confrontation and a dialogue with the – sometimes randomly generated – audience, and to transform public space into a playing field with rules that are tested collaboratively. Can the public space really be taken as a place of different opinions and voices? What constitutes public opinion? What do we understand by public space? These are some of the questions raised by the Playing the City 2 project.

The concept that Playing the City 2 realises, on various levels, is a continuation of the ideas of the major avant-garde movements of the twentieth century. In the early twentieth century, the Dada movement rejected "conventional" art and art forms as well as bourgeois ideals, taking to the street instead. It is also worth mentioning Guy Debord's Situationism, which 50 years later still has a strong influence on the contemporary art scene, notably on "Public Art", and which has inspired theoreticians such as Michel de Certeau to define space as a "practised place" and to locate its significance in the activities taking place within it. The urban researcher Armando Silva argues similarly, differentiating the city into the architectural fact and a performance consisting of human interactions. For artists of so-called relational aesthetics, processes such as intersubjectivity and interaction are both the starting and endpoints of their artistic work. According to Nicolas Bourriaud, the utopian potential in developing artistic spaces in this way lies in being able to provide alternative forms of sociality, critique and happiness. They have all turned away from the transformative potential of grand narratives, and instead see opportunity for change in the direct encounter with people.

Playing the City 2 offers a look into the wide varieties of current participatory and collaborative art: one large-scale installation by the Austrian-Croatian design collective For Use / Numen fills the architecture of the Schirn with a walk-in cocoon of transparent adhesive tape. Since the installation can be experienced and entered, it becomes a fixed component and can be used as such by the inhabitants of public space. The installation by artist duo Michael Clegg & Martin Guttmann, "Open Debate Station, Frankfurt", questions the structure and function of public debates. They design a discussion platform that, through fixed furniture and established rules of play, becomes a place for a public, structured and fair exchange of opinions. In this work, the two artists refer both to the tradition of Talmudic interpretation and to the history of the Frankfurt School. The Italian artist Paola Pivi will engineer unexpected situations on Frankfurt public transport as part of her work: during rush hour, an individual actor first starts to sing a song, and then gradually – apparently at random – more musicians will join in, singing or playing instruments, thereby disrupting the everyday situation of a silent trip by bus or tram.

The title of Annika Lundgren's project, "The Stock Is Rising", is a historical reference to a 1967 action, in which a group of 20,000 peace demonstrators led by Abbie Hoffmann gathered before the Pentagon in Washington D.C. and sang loudly to drive evil spirits from the building, as part of a protest against the Vietnam War. The action planned by Lundgren for Playing the City 2 is a response to the international financial crisis and will start by publishing information on the website www.stockisrising.com about the action, about Abbie Hoffman, about levitation as a form of parapsychological practice in which the pure force of thought overcomes the gravity of objects, and about the financial crisis. On 21 September 2010, between 15:00 and 17:35, participants in the action will gather in front of the Alte Börse (former stock exchange) in Frankfurt, and make the building hover. This action will be networked worldwide via the website.

DIRECTOR: Max Hollein

CURATOR: Matthias Ulrich

Interview Matthias Ulrich with Leonid Tishkov

Public space is a closely contested realm. Michel de Certeau moreover describes this space as the result of all activities occurring within that space. Why is it important as an artist to participate in these public struggles or activities, and what is there to be gained?

Art introduces utopias, contructs models of the world, rocks existing connections and thus creates the conditions for the break-up of social concepts and opens up new paths for social development. An artist’s discriminating glance sees something else, buried under the dense mass of the ruling ideology. Artists and poets – and they are part of society – can see what lies hidden, take note of the small and insignificant, detect glimpses of poetic beauty in piles of rubbish, return to trampled fields and break down invisible walls. They’re an important part of society even though the state pens them up in reservations, which is happening right now in Russia.

Saskia Sassen distinguishes between public space and publicly accessible space. What are your expectations of public space? Antiquity’s agora or modern mall?

Art can exist anywhere – in a drop of water in the fountain on the square, in the white cube of the gallery, in a mall or on the roof of my studio. Yet this existence is tantamount to the existence of art on Saturn, right up to the moment when the heart of the viewer responds to it (the art) and it settles in their memory, somewhere, on a chemical level. Public space, to me, is merely the place and opportunity to turn to one person, whoever is in front of me.

In recent years, the term social turn has been discussed in art theory. It stands for the integration of social processes and their alteration through artistic interventions and activities. How do you and your work refer to social turn?

Such a ‘turn’ had already been indicated at the beginning o the 20th century, namely by Vladimir Tatlin under the motto “Art into Life”. He claimed that art should actively participate in politics, economics, technology, science – human life in its totality. One of the first mobile sculptures in the world was the memorial for the III. International – and it was constructed by a multitude of people like a mass action or performance. In 1925, it moved in Leningrad as “izoustanovka” (art installation), adorned with utopian mottos, and the artist appeared as the “initiative unit”. The model of “Letishkov” I created in 1998 in Stockholm with the help of Swedish craftsmen, the theatrical performance at the Faerg factories during the same year, where more than 40 actors took part – those projects were based on Tatlin’s ideas of the structures of limitless technological and scientific progress and the organic, ‘natural’ way of living of humans. In my case, a kind of revision occurred, but the poetic-utopian part remained unchanged.

French philosopher Jacques Rancière puts emphasis on the creativity of the viewer, which an artwork could initiate. Shared creativity between the artist and the viewer, arranged in the participatory work of art, offers opportunities for new activities. Does this practice – sooner or later – render the artist redundant?

Every piece of art is charged with its creator’s energy, and if we are touched by a picture or sculpture of an artist – even if they’ve been dead for a long time – we feel that charge. Maybe new art has more opportunities to transmit this charge, with its experiences in theatre, cinema and the media. Within the industry there is the figure of the ‘animator’ who enlivens the inert masses waiting for entertainment. This experience is being utilized by contemporary art, assuming not only the role of the “craftsman”, but also the “clown”. But key is the creative energy of the artist. What does it mean, what’s its significance, its effect on a passive viewer. So a future without artists is not possible – their number increases, but their presence less noticeable. Art becomes more and more democratic, free, more ‘humanistic’ due to the education, communication and availability of the means of production.

What does it mean to you, if the production as well as the appropriation of art work includes the activity of other people – artists, non-artists, the audience?

Art as an open system has always been very attractive to me. In the early 1990 I worked for a project called “Dabloiden” with disabled children, at the beginning of the following decade I organized exhibitions and actions on the roof of my studio in collaboration with other artists; the central theme was not just location but also the idea of art as a free zone. And if the market dictates the rule of the supermarket, the recognizability of its style, repeatability of its name, endless self-citation, so that’s why. Working with other authors (often not artists) I don’t just get the unforeseeable result, but true inspiration as well.

What are your experiences so far with projects that have required the active participation of the public, particularly in relation to their production and realization?

The last large project – the performance “Die Fabrik der Dabloiden” (The factory of the Dabloids) which happened in a factory in Ekaterinburg with the support of the NCCA (centre for contemporary art). The disused factory floor had been equipped for the production of the Dabloids (I have been working with these creatures for 20 years); this work was undertaken by workers who previously had worked at this factory. I paid them the average wage they had earned before being made redundant. Following my instructions, approx. 10 people – spectators could join in – made over 30 objects during a five day period. This social action now exists as an installation containing video, the comments of the participants that are registered as artists. With this project I realized the idea of “Art into Life” by communication my creativity as an artist and conveying the means of production and money. In this case, the artist not only exchanges energy with the audience, but appears as a responsible member of society and transforms the initially meaningless creative act into a radical social gesture.

Within participatory art we can differentiate between performers and co-creators. Art as an idea and the result as social work?

I call the artist an “initiative unit” – after Tatlin – he or she is the leader of any creative practise. The curator is a commissioner (as in the soviet army), universal figure of the ‘helper’. They’re needed as an interpreter for the artist to communicate his activities to the audience. The artist, the one generating the idea, can be ‘actor’ or not! In my project “Private Moon” I allow the celestial body to go on an autonomous journey, it is handedover from on to another viewer within a set timeframe. They receive the object and create the installtion themselves, immerse it in their habitat. Poetry plays an important role in this tale, it is being materialized by the moon having descended from its celestial place. Participants feel it, because they have ‘received’ the moon. How and where, what they feel when they receive the object, how they interact – all this is part of the project. “Private Moon” is poetry in action. Implementation of utopian ideas into our sphere. And I declare: poetry changes the world for the better!

Jean-Luc Nancy is critical of community in the sense of its creating a common-being, having been awarded a quasi religious identity. Pluralism, according to Boris Groys, is the principal value created by a participatory practice. Apart from another successful operation of the communication of the art system, why do contemporary artists cooperate, collaborate, and work with artist’s collectives?

There is no shartage of communication – to the contrary! But we’re lacking creative power! Art has to be a free zone, where artists – using their imagination, poetic responsibility – create a new world where people can live without religious or national prejudice and without national borders. And this is why in future current international artistic experiences can be applied to the whole of mankind.

A large part of participatory art refers to happening or theatre. The invisible theatre, a form of discourse originated in 1920’s Soviet Union, entirely relinquished the separation of actor and audience. How do you and your work relate to theatre?

Some of my theatrical performances end with me leaving behind decorations and objects as an installation in the exhibition hall. Viewers in this hall don’t see any activity, the game is already up. But sometimes they correlate with the objects through touch, play, photography, and so they become a part of the installation, too. However, I am more interested in the long term relations with the viewer, he has to somehow continue my art long after the initial encounter with it. In 2006, for example, a group of young people organized the production of Dabloids – I wasn’t even part of it. Approx. 50 people gathered at the Moskva-River and produced – publicly, in front of an audience – the Dabloids. And then one of them flew into the sky… I was invited to this action as a viewer – nothing more. And I feel it is a real privilege, simply being a spectator in your own world!

How much importance do you attach to affecting the behavior of others with your art? What do you expect from the audience in general?

I absolutely can not take the role of a dictator! It’s about violence, and to me, only love matters. Only love renders our world feasible, it creates art and justifies its existence. And my viewers are those people who need love. That is to say everyone living on Earth!

1)
Der offentliche Raum ist ein von Interessen umkampfter Raum. Michel der Certeau beschreibt den (offentlichen) Raum uberdies als Resultat der darin vorkommenden Aktivitaten. Warum ist es wichtig, dass sich Kunst in diesen Kampf, in diese Aktivitaten einmischt, und welche Siege kann sie dabei erzielen?

Die Kunst stellt die Utopien vor, baut die Modelle der Welte auf, schaukelt die feststehenden Verbindungen und schafft damit die Bedingungen fuer den Aufbruch der gesellschaftlichen Konzepte und oeffnet dabei die neuen Wege der gesellschaftlichen Entwicklung. Kuenstler mit seinem distanzierenden Blick sieht das Andere, was unter der dichten Masse der herrschenden Ideologie begraben ist. Kuenstler und Dichter — und die sind ein Teil der Gesellschaft - koennen das Geheime sehen, das Kleine und das Unwesentliche beachten, die Binkel der Poesie aus dem Muell entziehen, zu zertretenen Felden zuruekkehren und die unsichtbaren Waende brechen. Dabei sind die ein wichtiger Teil der Gesellschaft, obwohl der Staat sie in die Reservationen eintreibt, was jetzt in Russland passiert.

2)
Saskia Sassen unterscheidet offentlichen Raum von offentlich zuganglichem Raum. Welche Erwartungen verbindest du selbst mit dem offentlichen Raum? Antike Agora oder moderne Mall?

Die Kunst kann ueberall existieren — in einem Tropfen des Brunnens auf dem Platz, im weissen Saal der Kunsthalle, in einem Mall oder auf dem Dach meines Studios. Aber diese Existenz ist der Existenz der Kunst auf Saturn gleichbedeutend bis zu dem Moment, wann das Herz des Zuschauers auf sie (die Kunst) antwortet und sie setzt sich dann in seinem Gedaechtnis, irgendwo auf dem Niveau der chemischen Reaktionen. Der oeffentliche Raum ist fuer mich nur Platz und Anlass um mich an einem einzigen Menschen anzuwenden, der mir gegenueber steht.

3)
Man spricht in der Kunst seit ein paar Jahren vom social turn. Gemeint damit ist die Einbeziehung von sozialen Prozessen und ihre Veranderung durch kunstlerische Aktivitaten. Inwiefern wurdest du deine Arbeit mit dem social turn assoziieren?

Solcher «turn» wurde schon am Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts im revoltunaeren Russland vorgegeben und zwar von Vladimir Tatlin mit seinem Motto «Die Kunst ins Leben!» Er behauptete und forderte, dass die Kunst sehr aktiv an Politik, Wirtschaft, Technik, Wissenschaft, Betrieb — an das menschliche Leben insgesamt — teilnehmen muss. Eine der ersten mobilen Skulpturen in der Welt war das Denkmal der III Internationale - und es wurde auch von vielen Menschen aufgebaut wie eine Massenaktion oder Performance. Und 1925 bewegte es sich in Leningrad als «izoustanovka» (kuenstlerische Anlage) mit utopischen Mottos geschmuckt und der Kuenstler trat dabei als die «intiative Einheit» (iniziativnaya edinica) auf. Das Modell von «Letishkov», das ich 1998 in Stockholm mit Hilfe der schwedischen Handwerker geschaffen habe, das teatrale Performance an das Zentrum der aktuellen Kunst Faergfabriken in demselben Jahr, an dem mehr als 40 Schauspeler teilgenommen haben — diese Projekte basierten sich auf Tatlin's Ideen der Zusammensetzung des grenzlosen technichen und wissenschaftlichen Fortschrittes und der organischen, «natuerlichen» Lebensweise der Menschen. In meinem Fall gab es in gewissem Sinne die Revision, aber der poetisch-utopische Teil blieb ungeaendert.

4)
Die Kunst verfugt, nach Jacques Ranciere, uber einen emanzipatorischen Rahmen, innerhalb dessen der/die BetrachterIn die eigene kreative Vorstellung uben konne. Geteilte Kreativitat zwischen KunstlerIn und BetrachterIn, wie in partizipatorischen Arbeiten, eroffne Moglichkeiten zu neuen Handlungsweisen. Macht sich der/die KunstlerIn durch eine solche Praxis nicht uberflussig a la longue?

Jedes Kunstwerk hat die Ladung der Energie seines Schoepfers und wann wir von einem Bild oder einer Skulptur eines sogar lang gestorbenen Kuenstlers beeindruckt sind, bekommen wir diese Ladung. Vielleicht hat die neue Kunst mit Erfahrungen in Theater, Kino und Media mehr Moeglichkeiten um diese Energie zu uebergeben. Aktuelle Industrie schlaegt uns die Figur des “Animators” vor, der die inerte Gruppe der Menschen, die auf “entertaiment” warten, anzuendet. Diese Erfahrung wird auch von der aktuellen Kunst benutzt, die der Gesellschaft nicht nur die Figur des “Handwerkers”, sondern auch des “Clowns” vorschlaegt. Aber das Wichtigste liegt in der kreativen Energie des Kuenstlers. Welchen Sinn hat sie, welche positive Bedeutung, wie sie auf einem passiven Zuschauer einwirkt. Und eben deshalb ist die Zukunft ohne Kuenstler unmoeglich – die Anzahl wird groesser, aber ihre Praesenz wird nicht so merkbar (sichtbar). Die Kunst wird mehr und mehr demokratisch, frei, “humanistischer” dank der Ausbildung, Kommunikationen und Erreichbarkeit der Produktionsmittel.

5)
Welche Bedeutung hat jene Kunst fur dich, zu deren Herstellung und Verwendung andere Menschen – Kunstler oder Nicht-Kunstler, das Publikum – involviert sind?

Kunst als ein geoeffnetes System war fuer mich immer attraktiv, noch am Anfang der 1990-er Jahren arbeitete ich fuer das Projekt “Dabloiden” mit behinderten Kindern, Anfang der 2000 organisierte ich mit einigen Kuenstlern und Musikern Ausstellungen-Aktionen auf dem Dach meines Studios, die alle nicht nur mit dem Raum vereinigt waren, sondern auch mit der Idee der Kunst als Freiheitszone.
Und wenn uns das Markt die Regel des Supermarkts diktiert und zwar Erkennbarkeit des Stils, Wiederholbarkeit des Namens, unendliche Selbstzitierung, so dementgegen waehrend der Arbeit mit anderen Autoren (haeufig auch nicht Kuenstlern) bekomme ich jedesmal nicht nur das unvorsehbare Produkt, sondern auch echte Inspiration.

6)
Welche Erfahrungen hast du bei deinen bisherigen Projekten gemacht, die die aktive Beteiligung des Publikums, insbesondere die Herstellung und Realisierung der Projekte betreffend, erfordert haben?

Das letzte grosse Projekt — Performance «Die Fabrik der Dabloiden», das in Ekaterinburg mit Unterstuetzung der Uralischen Filiale des Zentrum fuer aktuelle Kunst (NCCA) in einer Fabrik stattfand. Die leer stehende Werkhalle wurde fuer die Produktion der Dabloiden (Objekte-Klischee, mit denen ich schon 20 Jahre arbeite) ausgeruestet und dafuer nahm ich in Dienst die Arbeiter, die frueher von dieser Fabrik entlassen wurden. Ich zahlte ihnen den durchschnittlichen Lohn, den sie bevor der Entlassung bekamen. Nach meinen Anweisungen haben circa 10 Personen — und jeder Zuschauer konnte hinzutreten — waehrend 5 Tage mehr als dreissig Objekte gemacht. Jetzt existiert diese gesellschaftliche Aktion als Installation mit Video, Ausspruechen der Teilnehmer, die als Kuenstler gemeldet sind. So habe ich in diesem Projekt die Idee «Die Kunst ins Leben» realisiert, indem ich als Kuenstler meine Kreativitaet und dann Produktionsmittel und Geld mitgeteilt habe. Und in diesem Fall tauscht der Kuenstler mit dem Publikum nich nur mit der Energie auf, sondern tritt er als ein verantwortlicher Mitglied der Gesellschaft und wandelt den urspruenglich sinnlosen schoepferischen Akt in die radikale gesellschaftliche Geste um.

7)
Innerhalb der partizipatiorischen Kunst kann man zwischen Ausfuhrenden und Mit-Schaffenden unterscheiden. Die Kunst als Idee und das Resultat als soziale Arbeit?

Ich nenne den Kuenstler – nach Tatlin – die “initiative Einheit”, er hebt die Welle auf, natuerlich ist er Fuehrer in jeder schoepferischen Praxis. Kurator ist ein Kommissar (wie in der sowietischen Armee), universelle Figur des “Hilfers”. Man braucht sie als einen Dolmetscher fuer den taubstummen Kuenstler, der seine Aktivitaeten dem Publikum erklaert. Der Kuenstler, also derjeniger, der die Idee generiert, kann selbst “Taetiger” sein und kann nicht! So zum Beispiel in meinem Projekt “Der private Mond” lasse ich den Himmelskoerper in autonome Reise ab und er wird von Zuschauern- Teilnehmern waehrend der festgestzten Zeit von Hand zu Hand uebergeben. Sie bekommen das Objekt und machen selbst die Installation, tauchen es in ihren Lebensraum ein. In dieser Geschichte ist es Poesie sehr wichtig, die durch den vom Himmel herabgestiegenen Mond materialisiert wird. Alle Teilnehmer der Aktion a priori fuehlen es, weil sie den Mond “angenommen” haben. Wie und wo, was fuehlen sie, als sie das Objekt bekommen, in welcher Weise wirken sie mit ihm zusammen – das ist alles ein Teil des Projekts. “Der private Mond” - das ist Poesie “in action”, Durchsetzung in unseren Raum der utopischen Ideen. Und ich erklaere: die Poesie wechselt die Welt zum Guten!

8)
Jean-Luc Nancy kritisiert die Gemeinschaft in ihrem Gemein-Sein, einer quasi religios gestifteten Identitat. Vielfalt, so Boris Groys, sei der primare Wert, den die partizipatorische Praxis herstelle. Worin besteht nun eigentlich dieser Trend zu Kooperationen, Kollaborationen, Kunstlerkollektiven – abseits einer erfolgreichen Kommunikation innerhalb des Kunstsystems?

Wir haben keinen Mangel an Kommunikation – ganz im Gegenteil! Aber uns mangelt die schoepferische Kraft! Die Kunst muss die Zone der Freiheit sein, wo die Kuenstler mit ihrer Einbildung, poetischer Verantwortung vor der Zukunft die neue Welt schaffen, wo die neuen Menschen ohne religioese, nationale Vorurteile und ohne staatliche Grenzen leben werden. Und deshalb kann in der Zukunft die aktuelle internationale kuenstlerische Erfahrung fuer die ganze Menschheit benutzt werden.

10)
Vieles der partizipatorischen Kunst referriert auf Happening oder Theater. Eine dieser Diskursformen, die aus der ehemaligen Sowjetunion der 1920er Stammt, namentlich das unsichtbare Theater, hob radikal die Trennung von SchauspielerIn und ZuschauerIn auf. Welche Beziehung hast du und hat deine Kunst mit dem Theater?

Einige meine teatrale Perfomaces beenden sich damit, dass ich die Dekorationen und Objekte als Installation in einer Ausstellungshalle lasse. Als die Zuschauer in diese Halle eintreten, sehen sie keine Aktivitaet, das ist schon die Zone des beendeten Spiels. Aber manchmal wirken sie mit den Gegestaenden durch Beruehrung, Spiel, Photo zusammen und so werden sie ein Teil der Installation. Aber viel interessanter fuer mich sind die langfristigen Beziehungen mit dem Zuschauer, er muss auch nach dem Begegnen mit meiner Kunst sie irgendwie fortsetzen, weiter spielen. So zum Beispiel organisierte 2006 die Gruppe der jungen Leute die Gesellschaft fuer die Produktion der Dabloiden – ich nahm daran ueberhaupt nicht teil. Circa 50 Personen sammelten sich am Ufer des Moskva-Flusses und machten - oeffentlich, vor dem Publikum – die Dabloiden. Und dann flug einer hoch in Himmel... Ich wurde zu dieser Aktion als Zuschauer eingeladen – nichts mehr. Und das ist ein echtes Privileg deine eigene Welt nur als Zuschauer zu sehen!

10)
Wie wichtig ist es dir, mit deiner Kunst auf das Verhalten der anderen einzuwirken? Von welchen Erwartungen (d)eines Publikums gehst du normalerweise aus?

Auf keinen Fall kann ich auf sich die Rolle des Dikators aufnehmen! Darin gibt's Gewalt, fuer mich ist allein die Liebe wichtig. Nur die Liebe macht unsere Welt moeglich, nur sie schafft die Kunst und rechtfertigt ihre Existenz. Und meine Zuschauer sind die Menschen, die die Liebe brauchen. Das heisst alle, die auf der Erde leben!

17 August 2010
Copyright: SCHIRN Kunsthalle

http://www.playingthecity.de/
http://www.wechselausstellungen.de/aktuelle-pressenews/playing-the-city-2/

Diver LightHouse. Balaclava bay. August 2010

2010-08-14T02:39:00.000-07:00

http://www.unian.net/rus/news/news-391292.html

http://ic.vc/nc/0816/6627.html

http://ncca-moscow.livejournal.com/99296.html

http://nefakt.info/8221/

http://inforotor.ru/news/6017844

Sky in the Art

2010-08-01T11:51:00.001-07:00

12 August 2010, Russian Museum, Benois Wing

PLAYING THE CITY II

2010-07-26T10:50:00.000-07:00

After the project’s success in the previous year, “Playing the City II” presents another fabulous range of artistic activities in public space, involving the city and its inhabitants in very different ways. Over a period of 18 days, the Frankfurt city center will be the site of regular new actions and activities. The specially conceived works will be created by 20 international artists in collaboration with the general public. Collaborative and participatory works are expected from national and international artists such as Nina Beier, Clarina Bezzola, Julien Bismuth, Clegg & Guttmann, Cosalux, For Use / Numen, Swetlana Gerner, Josef Loretan, Jan Lotter, Annika Lundgren, Lee Mingwei, Ivan Moudov, Anny und Sibel Öztürk, Paola Pivi, Plural Art Collective, Reactor, Leonid Tishkov, Gavin Turk, and Vanja Vukovic. At the heart of the project lies the artistic engagement with public space and with concepts such as the social turn and community-based art. In parallel, an office will be set up in the SCHIRN’s exhibition space, providing information on the artists and video documentation of all the actions.

Curator: Matthias Ulrich (SCHIRN)

09 SEPTEMBER - 26 SEPTEMBER 2010
OPENING HOURSTUESDAY, FRIDAY - SUNDAY 10 AM - 7 PMWEDNESDAY AND THURSDAY 10 AM - 10 PMCLOSED ON MONDAYS

http://www.schirn-kunsthalle.de/index.php?do=exhibitions_detail&id=103&lang=en

„LICHTFLÄCHE“ VON LEONID TISHKOV

2010-07-10T11:34:00.000-07:00

http://www.barbarian-art.com/exhibitions_list.php

Photographie de la nouvelle Russie

2010-07-05T23:21:00.000-07:00

La Maison Europeenne de la Photographie, organise à Paris jusqu'au 29 aout 2010, une exposition qui cherche à montrer "la polyphonie et l'extraordinaire vitalité de la photographie russe contemporaine".

http://www.mep-fr.org

http://www.mep-fr.org/expo_1.htm

http://www.photo.fr/blog/1048-Photographie-de-la-nouvelle-Russie-1990-2010-.html

http://www.lefigaro.fr/publiredactionnel/2010/07/23/06006-20100723ARTWWW00427-des-cliches-et-des-signes-de-liberte.php

CREATURES in OkNo Gallery Chelyabinsk

2010-06-04T02:15:00.000-07:00

CREATURES
9 June - 27 June 2010
Installation, objects, drawings, video

http://www.oknogallery.ru/en/

Private Moon in Zurich

2010-05-30T00:40:00.001-07:00

Sihl river, view from Sigi-Feigel- Terrasse

May 27th - August 24th 2010

Private Moon in Children Art Museum_Kaohsiung_Taiwan

2010-05-23T21:11:00.000-07:00

http://colorfuldye.blogspot.com/2010/05/blog-post_25.html

GASTRÄUME. KUNST AUF ÖFFENTLICHEN PLÄTZEN ZÜRICHS

2010-05-13T08:36:00.000-07:00

LEONID TISHKOV, «DER PRIVATE MOND», 2003
SIGI-FEIGEL-TERRASSE , BARBARIAN ART GALLERY

27 May - 27 August

Unter dem Titel «Der private Mond» schlägt der russische Künstler Leonid Tishkov, der von der Galerie als „Neo-Romantiker einer postindustriellen Gesellschaft“ beschrieben wird, die Aufstellung einer Leuchtskulptur in Form einer Mondsichel vor, gefertigt aus Kunststoff, Metall und LED-Elementen, gegebenenfalls auf einem Stab montiert. Die Plastik will die Geschichte des Mondes erzählen, der eines Tages vom Himmel auf die Erde fällt, dort von einem jungen Mann freundlich aufgenommen wird und so „unsere Einsamkeit im Universum überwindet und viele von uns miteinander verbindet“.
Der Jury gefällt die einfache Poesie der Arbeit, die subtile Dekonstruktion romantischer Stereotypen im Grossstadtdschungel. Sie rät jedoch, die technische Machbarkeit und Fragen nach der Sicherheit gegen Vandalismus zu prüfen, bevor eine allfällige Installation ins Auge gefasst wird. Als alternativer Standort werden die Bäume vis-à-vis der Sigi-Feigel-Terrasse oder der Brückenbogen erwogen.

http://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/ted/de/index/oeffentlicher_raum/kunst_oeffentlicher_raum/kunstprojekte_uebersicht/gastraeume.html

http://www.zuonline.ch/sda/storys.cfm?vID=5216

First South-Russian Biennale_Rostov_2010

2010-05-13T04:10:00.000-07:00

Solveig: The Landscape of My Memory
Installation, 2004: salt, glass, video, sound, 230 x 200 cm

Memory is a desert which we populate with the imaginary
In the landscape of my memory, one can see snow-covered fields and mountains, a small figure of a boy skiing along the shore of a frozen lake, and the traces of his skis in the snow. Following those traces, I travel into the past, restoring my ideal universe in which childhood is a time of spiritual depth and endless dazzling white snow. The vast sky above is like a window into childhood on which frosty patterns live, the northern lights glow, and huge stars fall. Snow is the time, the white imaginary landscape in which I settle my personal memories. It is there, at that hardly visible line of the snowy horizon, that the earthly and the transcendent spheres meet.

My Mother's Dress / Dematerialization
of Memory
10 photographs, 60 x 85 cm
Video, 3'
2006

After my mother's death I was left with her clothes: dresses,

scarves, blouses, underwear. The lonely dresses hung in the

wardrobe, silent on their wooden hangers. One of them
was the conservative black woollen dress of a primary-school

teacher. A colorful one of crepe de Chine was what she wore

on holidays. What was I to do with all that had been left after

her passing? Recalling how my mother had shredded old

clothes into strips to make carpets, I cut her dresses to ribbons,

to one endless ribbon, and spooled it into a ball. I cut

everything into "fringes," as my mother used to say.

Thus the clothes were dematerialized, converted into balls,

like atoms wound from electrons that hold
the nucleus of matter inside. "What beautiful material —

I shall make myselfa dress out of," my mother would say.

In the title of my work, "dematerialization" plays

on the similarity of the Latin roots for "matter" and "mother."

When I was done all that remained were the shadows

of dresses on the closet walls, bare hangers on nails, heartache

and a velvety photo album. And many colourful atoms

thatnow make up my reality, a peaceful

home fortified by love and memory.

Opening 21th May in Rostov Museum of Art

http://biennaler.ru/

CV Leonid Tishkov

2010-04-27T07:25:00.000-07:00

Leonid Tishkov’s poetic and metaphysic oeuvre is realised in a diverse and often unconventional range of media, including installations, sculpture, video, photography, works on paper and books. Tishkov started his career making cartoon like works in the 1980s that focused with ironic, black humor and political aspects. Since the beginning of the 1990s, however, his work moved increasingly towards large-scale installations that aimed to engage the viewer into absurdist situations with fictional cartoon characters and an admixture of theatrical action. This theatrical performances "Dabloids", "Deep Sea Divers", “Living in the Trunks”, who after turned into installations ( “Dabloid Factory”, “Divers” bronze sculptures ). At the same time Tishkov drawn to the theme of memory, creates a set of objects, videos and photos about his native place - the Urals and late mother, using different kinds of folk art and found materials – clothing and household utensils ( “The Knitling”, 2002, “Divers from Heaven”, 2004). Since 2000 the artist intensifies the romantic, even magical tradition, which was fully manifested in a series of performances "Anthology of Heaven '(1999-2002), carried out on the roof of the artist's studio and a long-play history of "Private Moon "(2003 - 2010). For the first time made the light object in shape of crescent Moon to the installation for open space, traveled to different countries and continents including Russia, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, Austria, France and Switzerland.

Leonid Tishkov was born into a school teacher’s family in small town of Russia, Urals in 1953, and now lives and works in Moscow. He has participated in numerous important group exhibitions including Berlin-Moscow Moscow-Berlin 1950-2000, Berlin, Martin Gropius Bau (2002), Eye on Europe, 1960 to Now - MoMA - Museum of Modern Art, NY (2006), Fabric of the Myth, Compton Verney Gallery, UK (2007), Singapore Biennale (2008) and Moscow Biennale (2009). Solo exhibitions include Nasher Museum of Duke University , Durham (1993), Museo de Arte Contemporeneo de Caracas Sofia Imber, Venezuela (1995), Block Museum, Northwestern University, Evanston (1996), Fargfabriken, Center for Contemporary Art, Stockholm, Sweden (1998), Center for Contemporary Art Uajzdowski castle, Warsaw (2007), Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan ( 2009), Moscow Museum of Modern Art (2010).

Solo Show

2011
Derelict Utopias, Jiri Svestka Galley, Berlin
Whitesnow gallery, Aukland, New Zealand
Arctic Dairy, Krokin Gallery, Moscow
Leonid Tishkov, Nina Lumer Gallery, Milan
2010
Leonid Tishkov LICHTFLACHE, Barbarian Art Gallery, Zurich
Ballade lumineuse, Taiss gallery, Paris
Leonid Tishkov IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS, Moscow Museum of Modern Art
Private Moon, Children Art Museum, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Leonid Tishkov Creatures, OkNO gallery, Chelyabinsk, Russia
2009
Private Moon, Kaohsiung Museum for Fine Arts, Taiwan
"Light All Around", Krokin gallery, Moscow
“Origin of Species”, Ravenscourt gallery, Moscow
2008
"House of Artist", Krokin gallery, Moscow
"Deep Sea Divers", Center for Contemporary Culture, Ekaterinburg University
2007
"Look Homeward", Center for Contemporary Art Uyazdovsky castle, Warsaw
"Homework", Krokin gallery, Moscow
"Solveig", the Van Ho Culture and Art Centre, Hanoi, Vietnam
"Divers from Heaven", Central House of Artists, Moscow
2006
"Ladomir: utopian objects". Krokin gallery, Moscow
"Private Moon". Novosibirsk art museum, Russia
"Automatic letters". Pinakoteka magazine, Moscow
2005
"Creatures". State gallery of Izhevsk, Russia
"Paintings 80th". Krokin gallery, Moscow
"Creatures". Yasnaya Poliana gallery, Tula, Russia
2004
"Vodolazy". Krokin gallery, Moscow
"Apokryfos", National Contemporary Center for Art. Moscow
2003
"Leonid Tishkov & Igor Macarevich: Masters of Russia Contemporary Mythology". Gallery K, Washington, USA
2002
"Communal Pulp",gallery of the MuHA club, Moscow
2001
"Vodolazes (Deep Sea Divers)". District of Columbia Arts Center, Washington, USA
"Farewell to the Christmas tree". TV-gallery, Moscow
"Creatures of the Soft World". Russian State museum of Applied art, Moscow
"ZhZL". Gallery of the MuHA club, Moscow
"Tishkov Festival". Cultural Center DOM, Moscow, Russia
2000
"Dabloids & another creatures". Nonmuseum, StPeterburg, Russia
1999
"Crystal Stomach of the Angel". Gallery Dziga, Lviv, Ukraine
"Creatures". Contemporary Art Center Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia
"Creatures". Yaroslavl' Art Museum, Russia
1998
"Dabloid Teater". Fargfabriken, Center for Contemporary Art, Stockholm, Sweden
1997
"Prothodabloids". ArtMedia Center, TV-gallery, Moscow
1996
"Creatures". Center for Contemporary Art, Chelyabinsk, Russia
"Creatures". State Art Gallery, Novosibirsk, Russia"Anatomia of Russia". Spider & Mouse Gallery, Moscow
1995
"Creatures". Museum of Art, Ekaterinburg, Russia
"Beast (TVar')". TVgallery, Moscow
"Dabloids and Elephants". Mary and Leigh Block Museum, Evanston Ill. USA
1994
"Creatures". Museo de Arte Contemporeneo de Caracas Sofia Imber, Venezuela
"La Route du Coeur". Epreuve d'Artiste gallery, Lille, France
"Stomaki". L-gallery, Moscow
"Reproduction". Center House of Artists Moscow, Moscow
1993
"Creatures". Duke University Museum of Art, Duram, NC, USA
1992
"Hard and Soft". Velta Gallery, Moscow
1991
"Not only Dabloids". Alyance Gallery, Moscow

Selected group exhibitions:

2011
Russian Cosmos, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea - Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy.
Proximity, Docks on the Seine, Paris

Paper Time, NCCA, Moscow
Home Video, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Russia
Illusion, Arsenal, NCCA, Nizhny Novgorod
9 Museum Biennale, Krasnoyarsk, Russia
ArtSound, RAM radiomobile museum, Roma, Italy
Blizzard, Arsenal, NCCA, Nizhny Novgorod
Earth.Cosmos.Gagarin. Krokin Gallery, Moscow
First Industrial Biennale in the Urals, Ekaterinburg
To See the Sound, NCCA, Moscow
Easter at Chekhov’s House, PL gallery, Moscow
2010
Playing the City II, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt
VOIS CE QUE J'ENTENDS, Center Des Arts Enghien-Les-Bains, France
Photographie de la nouvelle Russie, La Maison Europeenne de la Photographie, Paris
History of Russian Video Art, volume 3, MMoMA, Moscow
Photobiennale - 10, Moscow House of Photography
Summa Summarum, National Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow
KoMMissia, M'Ars Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow
Krasnoyarsk Museum Biennale, Russia
2009
3 Moscow Biennale, Russia
Reflection: The World Through Art, Dojima River Biennale 2009, Osaka
Thrill of the Heights, OK center, Linz, Austria
I Was Russia, Dunedin Art Museum, New Zealand
That Obscure Object of Art, collection of Stella Art Foundation , Palacco Ca' Rezzonico Venice
Past Future Perfect, Calvert22, London
Another Mythology, NCCA, Moscow
Russian Dreams…, Bass Museum of Art, Maiami
Walking a Fine Line. Russian Video Art, Monkey Town, NY,
SCOPE art fairs, NY, CU Art Museum, University of Colorado at Boulder ,USA
ARCO, Madrid
Alice in Wonderland, PL Gallery, Moscow
History of Russian Video Art, volume 2, MMoMA, Moscow
Russian Video Art, Egon Schiele Art Centrum Cesky Krumlov
Tales of Brothers Yung, Laboratory Gallery, Moscow
2008
"Stars of Russian Video Art", North West Film Forum, Seattle
"Singapore Biennale", Singapore
"The Fabric of Myth", Compton Verney Gallery, GB
"A(rt)R(ussia)T(oday)-index", Latvian National Museum of Art
"Teleport Teleport Fargfabriken", Fargfabriken Norr, Ostersund, Norway
"100 Years of the Tungussky Meteorit", Krasnoyarsk Museum Center, Russia
"Fest of Private collection", Ravenscourt Gallery, Moscow, Russia
"This not Food", ERA Foundation, Moscow, Russia
"IMPRINT, Russian artist-publishers" Bibliotheca Wittockiana, Brussels, Belgium
"Dots", Museum of Contemporary Art, Rostov, Russia
"REVERS DU REEL", l'espace Michel Journiac, Sorbonne, Paris
"Moscow News", Art Center "Gallery", Izhevsk, Russia
"Process & Alchemy", Civilian Art Project, Washington DC, USA
"Radikale Alltдglichkeit", Culture Xchange Center, Wien, Austria
History of Russian Video Art, volume 1, MMoMA, Moscow
Process & Alchemy, Civillian Art Project, Washigton DC, USA
ArtParis
2007
"Photobiennale", Branly Museum, Paris
"Adventure of the Black Square", State Russian Museum
"Progressive Nostalgia", Centro per l'arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci Prato, Italy
"The Time of storytellers", KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki
"Return to Memory", KUMU Museum of Contemporary Art, Tallinn, Estonia
"Architecture Ad marginem", State Russian Museum, St.petersburg
"Avanto,videofest", KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki
Krasnoyarsk Museum Biennale
"Barocco", Moscow Museum of Moderm Art
"Big Water Art Fest", Art Gallery of Yugra, Hanty-Mansyiask, Russia
"Words and Image", NCCA, Moscow,
"Tired Snow Videofest", Rodina Cinema Center, St.Peterburg
2006
Eye on Europe,MoMA, Museum of Modern Art, NY
Contemporary Russian Photography,Fotomuseum, Antwerpen,
Russian Book art XX century, Bibliotheca Wittocania, Brussel
Innovations,State Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow
Photobiennale 10, Moscow,
Codes of culture, Video Art from 7 Continents, ArteBA 2006, Black box/white cube video-space by The Project Room N.Y., Buenos Aires, Argentina
Moscow artist's message, Private moon,Nanto cultural center, Japan
2005
7 sins,Museum of modern art, Lubliana, Slovenia,
Beyond of red horizon: Moscow-Warsaw,Center for contemporary art Uyasvyadosky zamok,Warsaw
Moscow Breakthrough, Contemporary Russian Artists,Bargehouse, London
2004
Moscow-Berlin1950-2000, State Historical Museum,
MoscowDirection: South-North,Manez, Moscow, KINO gallery, Moscow
IX Art Forum,New Manez, Moscow
I International contemporary art exhibition,Bishkek Art Museum, Kirkizstan
2003
Moscow-Berlin1950-2000, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin
Direction:West,KINO gallery,New Manez,Moscow
Paracrafts,Cheboksary Art Museum, Graphic art of XXth century,Tretyakov Gallery, MoscowArtMoscow Studio, Moscow
Detende: Russian Contemporary Art Video Format,Slought Foundation, Philadelfia
Invisible Cities,Queen's University, Belfast
Artkliazma Fest, Moscow
2002
ArtMoscow Studio, Moscow VII Art Forum,New Manez,Moscow
2001
The View from Here, Contemporary Art Center of Virginia, VA,USA
VI Art Forum,New Manez,Moscow,
Direction:East,New Manez, KINO gallery,Moscow
2000
View from Here,Tretyakov Gallery,Moscow
The Body Memory,Petropavlavski krepost',SPb
Serials,Manez,Moscow
1999
Russian videoart,Kuntshalle Faust,Hannover,
Cinematexas, video festival
Russian Samizdat & Artist's books,Grafeion gallery,Praha,Contemporary Art Museum of Andy Warhol, Slovakiya
Space of a Book,Yaroslavl Art Museum,
RussiaArtit's books 70th-90th.Pushkin Art Museum, Moscow
1998
Praprintium,State Berliner Library, Bochum Museum, Furniture of Sven Lundh's Studio,Fargfabriken,Center for Contemporary Art,Stockholm
Sences Test Station,International Forum of ArtNew Maneze,Moscow
Art Books of the 90th,Montpelier Art Center, USA
1997
Portfolios for Portfolio Kunst,Albertina Museum
Russian Silkskreens from Moscow Studio,Corcoran Art Gallery, USARussian Artists from Moscow Studio,Mimi Ferst Gallery, NY
Dablus & Do press,UFSA University Library, Antwerpen,Belgium
SAMIZDAT East Europe, Douglas F.Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, USA
1996
Moscow Conceptual Aritsts,Duke University Museum of Art
Contemporary Russian Artists` Books, Aberystwyth Art Centre, Boise, IDAHO,USAGlyn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea, GB The John Rylands University Library,Manchester, GB
Nordgrafia 96,Gotland Konst Museum, Visby, Sweden
1995
Contemporary Russian Artists` Books,Stormont Rooms, Rye, GB
Avanguarde Russian Books,British Museum's LibrarySAGA 96, Alain Buyse Editeur, Paris
Russian Comics Strip,Centre Belge de la Bande Dessine, Brussel
1994
For Memory of Kashirka,Spider & Mouse Gallery, Moscow
Artists Books,Ekaterinburg Art Museum, Russia,Paper Theatre, Anna Akhmatova Museum, Peterburg,
SAGA 95, Alain Buyse Editeur,Paris
1993
A Time of Transition,City Museum and Art Gallery, Bristol, GB Ferens Art Gallery, Hull, GB New Territory of Art ,Art Center of Krasnoyarsk, Russia
Livres d'artistes Russes et Sovietiques,Art center of Userch, France
1992
International Exhibition of Visual Poetry,Pankow Gallery,Berlin
Russian Artist's Books,Lyric-Cabinette, Munich
1991
Furmanny's Artists,Martigni Art Center, Switzerland,Agasphere, Moscow Yung Palace
1990
Transfuture.International Visual Poetry,Hauptmanschule,Kassel,
Concrete.International Exhibition of Visual Poetry,City Museum of Gotha

Mythology of Leonid Tishkov’s everlasting returnsLeonid Tishkov’s works have come into being in our culture through nearly all fundamental artistic strategies – objects, paintings, installations, video art, performance, artist’s books. There is no denying that this body of work could be examined as a matrix, a model of an "autobiographical" phenomenon in contemporary integral art. The organic ties of this monolith, stemming from non-aesthetic sources, such as: the Ural mountains - the artist’s birthplace and the boundary between the East and the West; the topography of this very place – its mountain ranges and valleys; Tishkov’s peasant roots, which reach far back and are connected with his rustic sense of culture, which was later reinforced by basic knowledge resulting form his contact with educational institutions; the profession of a teacher, practiced by his father, as well as his own, that of a medical doctor, which influenced the geophysical character of the artist’s oeuvre. All of the above-mentioned factors shed only a little light on the determinability of the auto-biographical semantics of his, seemingly autonomous, artistic life. Cultural context transforms Tishkov’s work, and his very existence, into an uniform text which reveals its meaning with reference to completely different traditions and categories that the artistic reality in its basic form. Tishkov breathes and sways in a borderline situation, between art and life, transforming into an "opus" (the auto-bio-graphy described extensively by Valerij Podoroga’s artistic group), converting himself into a condition of the work’s existence, and refusing the contemporary "here-and-now". In one of his video works Leonid Tishkov, slowly, as if in a child’s dream, climbs the Kukan mountain – the mountain in the foot of which he spent his childhood. "Waving his wings", like Yves Klein once did, he ascends into the Great Nothing. Where, as he often says himself, everything is "upside down" and exists in the binary system: the up and the down, the color and its lack, sound and silence, myth and reality. Tishkov’s love for the "fabric", the "matter", constantly drives him to the process of materializing issues from the sphere of ideas – towards the “rag dolls from his childhood", towards the greater form of touch, when all human organs are able to feel the world, towards crating Cosmos as a refuge for all that is born. The connection between the matter, the mother, the womb and the continent (Russian "matka" and "matierika") in Tishkov’s artistic system illustrates the real depth of his mythical-poetic consciousness. The artist reconstructs his birth “place”, conveys its matrix-like aspect, its predilection to divisions, to duplications, to dabloidation. The phenomenal aspect of this space is realized in objects, the holy amulets of the primeval, as in the case of Joseph Beuys’s birth of prime-objects which accumulate the space around them and, as Martin Heidegger wrote "make it possible for a man to live among objects".For Leonid Tishkov, descending into the "underworld" is situated on the opposite pole of the tradition of journeys to the kingdom of death, described by Dante Alghieri in his "Divine Comedy". In the sacred center of the "underworld", the "crystal stomach of an angel" opens before the artist – an image which is symmetrical to that of a stone flower found in Bazov’s fairy tales from the Ural region. It is one of Tishkov’s best video works, referring to complete good, communion and blessedness. The way from the "underworld" becomes a way to heaven. It is – in the philosophy of Laozi – "all-encompassing, fixed, clear and high". Those features become visible in a Zen koan, in the flapping of wings, in the overcoming of time and space, in the evolutionary circle in which Leonid Tishkov’s work is located".
Text by Vitaly Patsyukov

Innovation Prize Winners 2010

2010-04-17T07:25:00.001-07:00

1) Work of visual art:
Sergey Bratkov
“Balaklavsky Drive”
2) Curator’s project:
Ekaterina Degot
“Kudymkor - is the Engine of the Future. Ekaterina Degot, curator and Leonid Tishkov, artist, tell the story of Petr Subbotin-Permyak”
3) Regional project of contemporary art:
Sergey Kovalevsky
VIII Krasnoyarsk Museum Biennale, “Dal' ( Open) ”. Krasnoyarsk
4) The new generation:
Semen Motolyanets and Dmitry Petukhov
“Figure skating at the soap”
5) Theory, criticism, art science:
Andrew Monastyrsky
“Aesthetic Studies”

http://russophile.org/2010/04/innovation-prize-winners/

Private Moon_Journey to Paris

2010-04-11T04:25:00.000-07:00

More than simply dead…
Homage to Marie Laurencin
Abandoned moon in a refuse bin – they no longer needed it, only you

Tokyo Palace
Hotel for one on the roof of a palace.

But not for you, moon – you tap at the window in vain, they won't open up.

Louvre at night
The moon has laid a silvery trail across the celestial ice.

I'll give her a star found in the yard among rubbish,

leaves and discarded memories.

Moon – despair
The moon fell from the clouds, unaware this railroad was abandoned long ago.

Now she has a companion in misfortune!

Warming my hands in the moonlight
The moon is warmer than this night in La Défense,

where the wind tears hats and leaves from passing trees.

Moon and rain
Mist and rain. Tonight the moon got soaked and fell on the roof of Pen's house in Le Marais.

All around the damp nocturnal air is filled with milky light,

hopefully not dissolving my contours altogether.

Star in a refuse sack
Seeking the star in a refuse sack, you fail to see the moon behind you

Noël
Christmas is here at last!
I will ride to the fairand sell the moon for a handful of silver

Moon concert
Is such happiness really possible –

the moon in the Tuileries Garden shines on you alone

Moon and Vénus callipyge
Homage to Georges Brassens
Moon and Venus, the wind stole your clothes in the night!

Paris, you must judge, who is most beautiful now?

Today’s moon is yesterday’s sun
Homage to the Pioneer Mitya Abrosimov

An accident on the railroad like yesterday's sun

Brassaï’s moon
On the steps of Montmartre you suddenly meet the moon,

leaning on a lamppost to rest as it rises to the sky – the wonder of the night!

Metaphysical landscape with moon
Homage to Giorgio de Chirico
Worked like an office troll till late at night,

here’s the reward – the moon on the street!

Nocturnal parking lot

Stop, car, the moon is sleeping here, don’t disturb it!

Three moons
Homage to Henri Cartier-Bresson
Behind the Saint-Lazare station
six in the morning by the lunar clock.
You leave the moon forever,

the moon will never abandon you

Farewell to the moon

Don’t stop the moon, it will climb to the sky on a beam from the Eiffel Tower

Ringing the moon
The moon is here on the balcony,

but still she is far away and won't hear you ringing.

Interdit sauf la lune
Forbidden except to the moon,
Only the moon can settle here,
Build towers right up to the sky –
Endless floors with a hint of sorrow and tenderness,

Open to the clouds, the rain and poets who wander in by chance

Moon in the cathedral

On Christmas Eve the moon has found shelter at the Virgin Mary’s feet

Private Moon_Journey to Paris_2009

All images and text by Leonid Tishkov

Photograph: Tim Parchikov

Moscow Photobiennale_2010_ Private Moon. Journey to Paris

2010-03-22T08:24:00.000-07:00

Leonid Tishkov. Private Moon. Journey to Paris

Photo by Tim Parchikov

Gallery "City of Capitals" 7th April until 15th May

Moscow, Presnenskaya Quay, 8 - 1

http://english.ruvr.ru/2010/03/24/5616521.html

Leonid Tishkov. In Search of the Miraculous

2010-01-30T11:52:00.001-08:00

Dates: January 28, 2010 — March 14, 2010 Venue: Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Ermolaevsky, 17 Opening: January 27, 2010, at 7 pm
Moscow Museum of Modern Art presents a retrospective show of the Moscow well-known artist Leonid Tishkov an artist, a narrator and a visionary, at the same time ironic and poetic. A total installation, presenting the imaginary worlds of Dabloids, Divers, Stomakis, and other creatures, created by artist within 30 years of his creative work, will take up several floors of the museum. Combining folklore and surrealism, addressing the theme of memory, and using banal subjects, Leonid Tishkov is always true to himself, turning art into a visual theatre. It is essential for the artist to see the world through he eyes of a child, to notice its miraculous manifestations, and, eventually, to turn into a fantasy creature himself.Leonid Tishkov is an integral part of Moscow art scene, a self-sufficient «brand». Few of his contemporaries have retained similar inner creative motivation. Long ago, he stepped over the line of searching for self-identification in art. His strategy lies in the continuous mythmaking, in producing rich and extremely dynamic narrative, in which the diversity of form originates from perpetually generated content diversity.
The display will represent a journey from the Lower World, through the Middle World, to the Upper World. The 4 floors will feature installations-narrations, arranged regardless of the date of execution. The Lower World speaks about Dabloids, Stomakis, Divers, Wooden Logs, People Living in Elephants’ trunks. The Middle-World is represented by biographic works: Knitling, Look at Your House, In My Father’s Field, Mother’s Dress, etc. The Upper-World addresses the sky: Talking to Heaven, Divers from heaven, the Moon, the Star, Solveig, Light is All Around, Ladomir: Objects of Utopia.
The show at Moscow Museum of Modern Art will present new installation «In Search of the Miraculous», dedicated to Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader, who went missing in the Atlantic Ocean 30 years ago.

Specially for the exhibition was published a catalog "In Search of the Miraculous" of 430 pages in color

http://www.kommersant.ru/doc-y.aspx?DocsID=1311904

http://www.gazeta.ru/culture/2010/01/28/a_3317604.shtml

http://www.gazeta.ru/culture/2010/01/28/a_3317604.shtml?/video/3317686.shtml

http://see-you-in-moscow.com/blog/artists_profile_leonid_tishkov/2010-01-22-32

http://mainpeople.ru/photo/7/Leonid_Tishkov_V_poiskah_chudesnogo_Izbrannye_raboty_1975_2010_gg:1/

http://faz-community.faz.net/blogs/moskauermonitor/archive/2010/02/21/leonid-tischkows-moderner-mensch-das-kind-im-tiefseetaucheranzug.aspx

Leonid Tishkov, Ballade lumineuse at Taiss gallery_Paris

2010-01-16T10:08:00.000-08:00

http://www.lepoint.fr/guide-sorties/2010-02-16/galerie-taiss-la-lune-voyageuse-de-leonid-tishkov/2017/0/424614

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeVAQEvyd0E

http://www.taissgalerie.com/en/exhibitions/

http://www.baltinfo.ru/news/V-Parizhe-zvuchit-Luchezarnaya-ballada-130079

Private Moon in Linz_4

2009-11-12T11:08:00.000-08:00

Photographs by Otto Saxinger, Miklos Boros

Faith in the Ideal

2009-11-01T21:57:00.000-08:00

FAITH IN THE IDEAL

I see an ideal kingdom in a stony and sleepy land. Artists founded that kingdom and inhabited it with their images.
An artist is like a mad gardener who has grown a garden in the desert. Generations of them brought earth in baskets there, sowed flower seeds and then every day went for water so far away that by the time they were back there were but a few drops of water left at the bottom of their buckets - the scorching sun had dried it up along the way. Yet, those few drops were enough to keep the garden alive.
I live there behind a fence, growing images that, like climbing plants, twine round and sustain my reality, restore my lost memory and prevent the decrepit and weak walls of the house of my life from crumbling down.
I thus bolster my understanding that life is not absurd and that my existence there is not a flash of some chance light or a perishable spark. What surrounds me? What surrounded me when I was an embryo? Out of non-existence and on to the edge of a precipice, I am trying to stay on the threshold of reality.
With but a movement of his pencil or an idea alone the artist is capable of creating an ideal world of his own free from violence, market and justice.
Reality – a chaotic and meaningless material world – is but a sketch to be redone on the body of the Universe, and this is within the artist’s power. Before being born, the Diver creates the world out of nothing.
Does the artist have to stick to the images produced by a legion of designers and to reflect pictures of the outside world with the help of distorting mirrors, thus multiplying them ad infinitum? Wouldn’t it be better to turn the mirror to oneself and to open up in front of it to one’s metaphysical depths?
Faith in the ideal and the fantastic reveals facts of different intensity of being and opens various ontological horizons.
Isn’t it a privilege to be an idealist nowadays? To decide to become an artist means today to follow the road of St. Francis of Assisi. When you cover this road you will be able to talk to birds, and angels will share their secrets with you, as they did with Swedenborg in his time. You will be able to notice small and insignificant things because they mirror something eternal and significant.
Artists and poets allow themselves to believe in the impossible and the unattainable, to build utopias and castles in the air and to inhabit the earth with imaginary worlds. We can thus show other roads rather than one and the same that a generalized human being usually takes.
Artists exist in society, serving as fine membranes that connect the visible world with the invisible fields around. Being fine and insignificant, they are thus themselves invisible. Always on the edge, the finer they get the closer they are to non-existence, they disappear without a trace, dissolving in their works. This worthy lot bordering on selfless devotion is not chosen but granted from time out of mind. One can be like that only if one believes in the ideal.
What ideal artists create is above life, and life cannot explain it. They create their own space that is governed by imagination, pervaded with happiness and attracts those around.
Their art is autonomous and part and parcel of them; they shed the burden of memory, get over knowledge and become innocent. Every time the products of such artists are pure and independent, and their work itself is the achievement of freedom.
Art gives us a chance to become free, and in this freedom we find faith in the ideal. Wherever there was doubt before, faith roots itself, and immediately despair gives way to hope and sorrow becomes joy.

Leonid Tishkov, 12 July 2006

Private Moon in Linz_3

2009-10-27T13:48:00.000-07:00

Photo by Miklos Boros , Otto Saxinger and Karin Hofbauer

http://www.ok-centrum.at/hoehenrausch/index.html

LIGHT ALL AROUND

2009-10-15T11:35:00.000-07:00

15.10.09 – 15.11.09

Leonid Tishkov

LIGHT ALL AROUND
To Vsevolod Nekrasov

The poet Vsevolod Nekrasov came to every one of my exhibitions. Instead of attending the opening ceremonies he used to come later, all alone, and examine the display. I was later told that Seva Nekrasov had visited the gallery, scrutinized everything, liked something and disapproved of something else. He once wrote a large poem about my Private Moon. At the latest exhibition the House of Artist he singled out The Starry Sky in Shoe Boxes especially: he liked those black cardboard boxes pierced by shining stars very much. Now that the autumn of 2009 is here, and we have “September and October both ending in ber,” the time has come for another show of mine. But my special rare guest, the poet Vsevolod Nekrasov, won’t be able to attend it for the obvious reason: “one cannot stay here,” on the ski-track because one has “to see the sky”. That’s why I have made an exhibition, with Vsevolod Nekrasov present again. He’ll be Here and Now. Here are his poems. Here are his skies. Here is his moon. Here is his light. Light is all around, and in the center of light is a tiny dot – the celestial skier Seva – light and all.
“This is all.
All and nothing else.
All and nothing else.
And everything’s fine.
And everything’s fine.
All and everything.”

http://www.tvkultura.ru/news.html?id=380838&cid=178

http://www.krokingallery.com/english/news/202/255.html

Private Moon in Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan

2009-10-09T11:52:00.000-07:00

Following its large-scale outdoor sculpture projects, ecological art projects and Contemporary Austronesian Art Project, the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts will highlight the nocturnal charms of the museums park with "light art". The renowned contemporary Russian master Leonid Tishkov, a talented artist working with performance, theatre, poetry and painting, will present a large moon installation rich in literary associations. Opening during the Mid-Autumn Festival, the exhibition will bring us a magnificent

visual feast of Russian culture and the poetic imagination of Nordic fairytales.

THE INNER URAL

2009-10-08T01:03:00.001-07:00

In the frames of the 3rd Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Arts M'ARS Centre for Contemporary Arts presents - THE INNER URALS, a project by the Yekaterinburg Branch of the NCCA

"THE INNER URALS"Curators: Alisa Prudnikova, Vladimir Seleznev, Svetlana Usoltseva

"The Inner Urals" is not a plagiarism of Pelevin, not even an homage to Boyce; rather, it is the very alchemy which emerges at the geographically enticing frontier between Europe and Asia. A deceiving metaphor for a region exceedingly rich in existential background.The Urals is either inside, or merely aside. Any attempt at metaphorical comprehension makes one cast aside all that is modern and related to frontiers and instead embrace images of inner experiences. But to what extent is that typical of the Urals? The Urals is a severely dissected space bound together by the almost souvenir stories – all those "from the Urals" and "we were born at the Urals". Those who live at the Urals not only form an eternal bond with those mountains, those forests, and those fields beneath the never-ending snow, they also carry the Great Ural Mythology gene. This mythology is like a fathomless quarry, a black hole that sucks in anyone who approaches it: the Demidovs, the Russian tycoons of yore, whose fake gold coins still excite the imagination of local treasure hunters; the numerous Ural craftsmen, from the fairytale Danila to the Cherepanovs; the Red Army divisional commander Chapaev, who had sunk into the River Ural as if into the mythical Lethe; the infernal pioneer Pavlik Morozov.And right in the middle of this pantheon is the custodian of cedar wisdom, the surrealist of mines and metallurgical plants – Bazhov, narrator of folk tales.Ekaterinburg is a very sensitive city, often overreacting, constantly amassing the functions of the center of the Urals. One has to firmly believe in one's center, which is located exactly where you live; and to do that one sometimes requires a certain initial shove or impulse. For the Ural artists, the fundamental principle has always been this: "Real art always comes from within", using the words of the artist Leonid Tishkov. Objective circumstances are not enough to explain the local cultural explosion; rather, there are some mutagenic agents at play here, creating this reality of the surreal space with an elusive identity.

Alisa Prudnikova, Vladimir Seleznev

Participants:

Leonid Tishkov

Kuda begut sobak

iZer Gut

Victor Davydov

Den Marino

Oleg Lystsov

Vladimir Seleznev

Alexander Shaburov

Elena Klimova

Alexander Belov

Alexander Solnechnyi

Fedor Telkov

Soup Studio

Julia Bezshtanko

Katya Poedynschikova

Kudymkor is Engine of the Future

2009-09-27T01:50:00.000-07:00

Kudymkor is the Engine of the Future.

Moscow – Winzavod Contemporary Art Center – fino al 18/10/09

Kudymkor is the Engine of the Future Ekaterina Degot, curator, and Leonid Tishkov, artist, tell the story of Pyotr Subbotin-Permyak curated by Ekaterina Degot Ekaterina Degot, curator, and Leonid Tishkov, artist, tell the story of Pyotr Subbotin-Permyak How can one represent art excluded from the mainstream of art history because it was made at too great a distance from its major museums? What is to be done with all those 'provincial' articulations of the modern in an unevenly globalized world? How should one deal with all the hybrids and mistranslations that aren't quite the right kind of modernism? 'Kudymkor is the Engine of the Future' asks these questions by examining the work of Pyotr Subbotin-Permyak, an obscure figure of the early Russian avant-garde. The exhibition, a conceptual curatorial project rather than a traditional museum retrospective, tells a story striking enough to be fiction.Pyotr Ivanovich Subbotin-Permyak (1886-1923) was born in the distant Perm region, and trained as a traditional artist in Moscow. In the heady days after the October revolution, he fell under the sway of the early avant-garde. In 1919, inspired by his friends Kandinsky, Kamensky, and Chlebnikov, he left Moscow to bring his lofty and rather naive ideas of the new art back to his birthplace, Kudymkor, a remote village near the town of Perm. It was here, among the impoverished Komi-Permyaks, that he founded a school of new art, studios, a museum, a theater, and an ethnographic collection. Almost the entire village was involved in these ventures. In 1923, Subbotin died of tuberculosis and exhaustion, and his pupils went their separate ways: one of them became a famous socialist realist painter, another stayed in the provinces to work as an art teacher, and another still, Subbotin's favorite student, 'the deaf-and-dumb Totmyanin' moved to Leningrad, where he became the chairman of a deaf-mute community - and for that very reason, an early victim of the Great Terror in 1937. To tell this story, curator Ekaterina Degot has enlisted the help of Leonid Tishkov, a contemporary artist and writer originally from the Sverdlovsk region, who fully appreciates Pyotr Ivanovich's boundless idealism and his old-fashioned love to art in all its pretensiousness and its simplicity.Tishkov has interpreted Subbotin-Permyak's life story in an album in which history and legend intertwine. It prefaces a traditional museum exhibit broken by curatorial and artistic interventions; quotes from Subbotin's writings appear as political slogans, conveying the pathos of Subbotin's life. A propaganda film from the Stalin-era has been intercut with quotes from Subbotin-Permyak, helping to show how some of the artist's ideas may have resurfaced in that later Soviet utopia. The exhibition, first shown in Perm May 2009, includes more than 60 works from the Subbotin-Permyak Museum of the Komi-Permyak Region and the Perm State Art Gallery.They comprise almost all surviving works by Pyotr Subbotin-Permyak, his contemporaries, and his students. Aside from these paintings and sketches, which have been especially restored for the exhibition, the exhibition also features a collection of Komi-Permyak folk art (etching boards), carved 18th century wooden sculptures from Perm, and around 50 period photographs found in the archive of the The Subbotin-Permyak Museum of the Komi-Permyak Region. The exhibition catalogue of 'Kudymkor is the Engine of the Future' includes texts by Ekaterina Degot, Leonid Tishkov, as well as an extensive biographical essay on Subbotin-Permyak's activities in Perm and Kudymkor by N.V.Kazarinova, assistent director of the Perm State Art Gallery. It is accompanied by a special reprint edition of Pyotr Subbotin-Permyak's main essay in theory 'On New Systems in Art.' 'Kudymkor is the Engine of the Future' is a special project of the Third Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art. Participating artists: Petr Subbotin-Permyak, Subbotin's pupils & contemporaries (Dmitry Budrin, Alexander Vereschagin, Magdalena Verigo, Vasily Gomzikov, Vladimir Ikonnikov, Ekaterina Kamshilova, Vasily Kobelev, Ivan Krokhalev, Alexandra Speshilova, Yevstolia Subbotina, Lavr Tarakanov, Valentin Tzelmer), Leonid Tishkov Exhibition organizers: New Collection Cultural Support Foundation (Perm), Perm State Art Gallery (Perm), Winzavod Contemporary Art Center (Moscow) With the support of: Proun Gallery (Moscow), The Subbotin-Permyak Museum of the Komi- Permyak Region (Kudymkor, Perm Region Image: © Leonid Tishkov, Portrait of Subbotin-Permyak, 2009 Winzavod Contemporary Art Center 4-th Syromyatnicheskiy lane, 1, bld.

http://subbotin-permiak.ru/

Art-Zavod exhibition in Ekaterinburg

2009-08-26T06:32:00.000-07:00

Dabloid Production Shop

The installation is a workshop for production of bulk products, namely objects, known as "Dabloids." This action-performance to work during the festival exhibition. For this purpose, invited a few workers and workers laid off from Worsted Plant. They paid the average daily wage in the mill, the number of days worked. They should sew Dabloid fabric, fill them and put on the table during the working day of the exhibition. Women workers and employees must be dressed in the form of a working mill, have experience of working with fabric, sewing. Design and sample products will be provided by the artist. Installation itself is a shop - a few tables - tables with sewing machines, table for the pattern, a table for packing and tables for the finished product. On the wall is hung with posters technological plans, drawings of the product. Foreman - inspector of finished products must be member of the NCCA. He should give the salary and monitor the implementation of standards, quality of products. On the wall is hung a banner with the text "production shop Dabloid" and a couple of maintaining the enthusiasm of the workers. Most importantly, the workers were satisfied with working conditions and wages.

During the exhibition it is clear that wage labor is pure art, although it is hard to believe. But the fact remains. The artist pays for labor and the workers themselves become part of an art project, paid for it. Money itself is played as a catalyst for creativity, no increment, and not bringing profits, and vice versa - they disappear, turning in a pile of useless items - Dabloid, as part of this money goes into the hands of workers, allowing them to exist.
Thus is manifested the social function of art, art becomes necessary people in the literal sense, while maintaining the purity and perfection, becomes an act of kindness and selflessness.

Dabloids, 1994-2009

Following the precepts of the great artist Vladimir Tatlin, the developer of the principle of «thing-IDEA», exactly the opposite, I used a variant of «IDEA-thing», because of the great Platonic principle of all that surrounds us - it is only shadows of things rather than things themselves. Our consciousness has given them the form and labeled. Dabloids - a phantom of human consciousness, mental baggage, social and family clichés, so make the whole of Dabloids - the primary task of the artist - avant-gardist. Manufacturing Dabloid don’t makes man free, but indicates the path of liberation. Consciously laboring in the field of reproduction Dabloid, the worker embodies in his funny and a bit strange form of all that pent up, that prevented him to live, that tormented his soul bonded circumstances. Through Dabloid – to freedom. Through Dabloid’s work - a revolution of consciousness!

Private Moon in Linz_2

2009-07-28T08:10:00.000-07:00

Photographs by Miklos Boros

Private Moon in Linz

2009-07-02T10:58:00.001-07:00

Photographs by Otto Saxinger

Living In a Trunk

2009-06-21T09:27:00.000-07:00

Living In a Trunk is almost a Chinese story, drawn in Indian ink. It tells about a frightened rabbit, about how standing next to person there is always something Huge. Maybe it's God, subconscious, eternity or the power. Sometime you think something is folloving you in your sleep - don't be afraid: it's only an elephant and you - his trunk. This is your world, from which you can't leave. You don't even want to give up this world. In the trunk it's warm and damp. You lie there naked, but it's safe. It's haven, the mother's womb in which the infant hid. Be happy as a trunk: two tusks protect you, two tiny eyes always follow you. Tomorrow the elephant will show us a valley of violets and how to pick bananas. Living In the Trunk is the Little Prince of Sant-Exupery, in which the person and elephant can't live without each other, and each dreams about freedom, forgetting about the rose of love.

While they haven't their own elephants they must sit in anthills

Each of us has own elephants

Living In a Trunk also wants a little love

At night they awakened Living In a Trunks in alarm and they ran with gasmasks on

A very heavy suitcase but in it are Livinh In a Trunk's things

Living In a Trunk's elephant went out of his mind

Fatal mistake of a lunatic: Living In a Trunk commits the suitcide of his elephant

L.I.T.'s elephant grows to the size of the universe

L.I.T. looks in microscope and sees: even the smallest microbe lives in a trunk

What has this freedom given him L.I.T. crawls along the ground like a worm

One must look after Living In a Trunk and with food nourish Living In a Trunk

Thus sleep Living In a Trunks roll up in balls close their eyes and silently lie crying in the dark

This one that's left his trunk will still be lying on the ground when the others move ahead

While Living In a Trunks sleep their elephants are making love

Knitling and Dreamlake

2009-06-20T08:25:00.000-07:00

"Knitted in a homely fashion in stripes of multicoloured wool, a bodysuit - one that covers the entire head - hangs forlornly against the gallery wall. It's the handiwork of the mother of Leonid Tishkov, one of five contemporary Russian artists featured in an exhibition that delves into myth, memory and family lore. Next to it there's footage of the besuited artist blindly prancing around on a rooftop, looking down upon a grey urban Soviet-era sprawl.

Tishkov's work, which also includes his childhood bed - a lightbox has replaced the mattress and a miniature figure of the artist perches on the rusted iron bedpost - captures something of the mood of much of the rest of the exhibition, in which we see a craft-based folksy aesthetic knitted to a conceptual sensibility. A certain playfulness vies with a prevailing melancholy.

Fisun Guener, Art Review: Past Future Perfect, in Metro, 19 May 2009, p.25

My Mother’s Dress

2009-06-11T01:25:00.000-07:00

My Mother’s Dress
(The Dematerialization of My Mother’s Clothes)

After my mother’s death I was left with her clothes: dresses, scarves,
blouses, underwear. The forlorn dresses hung in the wardrobe, all silent
on their wooden hangers. One of them was a conservative black woollen
dress of a primary school teacher. Another, colourful one of crepe-de-
Chine, was the one my mother used to wear for more festive occasions.
What do to with all that had been left over after she herself had passed
away? Recalling how my mother had shredded the old clothes into even
strips to make carpets out of them, I also cut her dresses into nice even
shreds – an endless ribbon – and spooled them into balls one after
another. I cut everything into ‘fringes’ as my mother used to call them.
Thus the clothes were dematerialised, converted into balls that are like
the atoms with electrons inside, atoms that contain the nucleus of the
matter. „What beautiful material – I shall make a dress of it for myself”,
had my mother said. The word ‘dematerialise’ seems to contain both
words ‘matter’ and ‘мать’ (‘mother’ in Russian, pronounced [mat]).
And as a result all that was left were the shadows of the dresses on the
walls, bare hangers on nails, heartache and a velvety photo album. And
many colourful atom-balls that now make up my reality, home of silence
upheld by love and memory.

Leonid Tishkov

THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF ART

2009-06-03T03:23:00.000-07:00

The Dry Season Arrived, and the Deep Sea Divers Who Didn't Manage to Leave the Wastelands in Time, Turned Into Potatoes, dalla serie Deep Sea Divers, 1997inchiostro di china su carta, 27,5x37,5 cm

THAT OBSCURE OBJECT OF ART at Museum Ca’ Rezzonico, Venice

An unusual look at Russian art from the last thirty years, highlighting its complexity and variety, beyond cliche. The exhibition features 70 works by artists such as Yuri Albert, Ivan Chuikov, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, Boris Orlov and Anatoly Osmolovsky, as well as Alexander Ponomarev with his ‘Submarine Subtiziano’. Curated by Vladimir Levashov, the exhibition is being jointly organised by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia and the Stella Art Foundation of Moscow.

"I Was Russia" exhibition at Dunedin Art Museum New Zealand

2009-06-02T09:29:00.000-07:00

I Was Russia

Starting Date: Saturday, 6 June 2009
Finishing Date: Sunday, 6 September 2009

Curated by Marcus Williams (New Zealand) and Konstantin Skotnikov (Russia) this exhibition brings together for the first time in New Zealand a rich collection of works by some of the most influential figures in Russian art today. I was Russia promises to be a visually rich and intellectually stimulating exhibition that will provide a unique insight into this burgeoning contemporary art scene. It showcases the work of the internationally renowned artists Alexander and Olga Florensky, Oleg Kulik, Leonid Tishkov, Dmitry Bulnygin, and the influential art collective Factory of Found Clothing and Blue Noses Group.

http://dunedin.art.museum/exhibitions.asp?p=2

Private Moon in Linz

2009-05-31T08:35:00.001-07:00

Leonid Tishkov. Private Moon at St.Ursula chapel

Leonid Tishkov. Private Moon. 2009, OK center.

Photo by Otto Saxinger

http://www.ok-centrum.at/hoehenrausch/index.html
http://www.onculture.eu/story.aspx?s_id=935&z_id=1

Talking with the Heavens

2009-05-23T00:50:00.000-07:00

Leonid Tishkov
Talking with the Heavens

I.

Leonid Tishkov’s studio, set up on the roof of a 24-story building in southern Moscow, provides the location and natural scenery for a lot of creative art performances, staged both by the artist himself and by his fellow artists, photographers, and musicians. The project “Talking with Heavens” displays pieces created on the roof of the artist’s studio throughout the past decade. The show consists not only of documentation of performances by Leonid Tishkov from 1998 to 2008 (often in collaboration with artists such as Andrey Suzdalev and Olga Khan, Konstantin Skotnikov, the photographers Boris Bendikov and Valery Sylaev, and the musicians Mikhail Khodarevsky, Dmitry Shumkov, and Yury Yaremchuk), but also of works by Tishkov that were inspired by being so close to the sky, in such a wide-open space.

Parts of this show were included in the exhibit “Multimedia and the Artist’s Book,” produced by the independent presses “Dablus” and “Alcool,” that was shown in the non-commercial sector of the book fair “Nonfiction” held in the Central House of the Artist, Moscow’s largest exhibition hall. The films in this show have also been aired on Russian television (“Pictures of the Wind” was shown on the Moscow Culture Channel) and shown at several film festivals: “Pictures of the Wind” at the Tenth Rossiya Documentary Film Festival in 1999 and “Aircreatures” at the 2001 Hamburg Film Festival (both films are in the Anthology Film Archives of Jonas Mekas Visual Arts Center in New York); these were also shown in 2004 at the EM Art Show in Naples, and at the NWFF (North West Film Forum) in Seattle in 2008; and “Watermelon Deep-Sea Divers” was in the 2008 Avanto Media Art Festival of the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki. The photographic performances and installations “Private Moon” and “A Star’s Visit” have also been exhibited in many museums in Russia and the rest of the world.

In Russian, the words for ‘sky’ and ‘heaven’ are the same: небо (“nyeh-buh”). Thus two spheres that are clearly separated in English (the stylistically neutral, everyday term 'sky' and the stylistically elevated, sacral term 'heaven') overlap in Russian, giving Tishkov entire project a dual resonance that is largely lost in English translation. Thus, although the exhibition is titled “Talking with Heaven,” and comprises works that engage the theme of the sky, one might as well call the exhibit “Talking with the Sky,” and think of its works as engaging the theme of heaven. Tishkov combines the mundane (rain, snow, the sky) and the magical and spiritual (angels, heaven) to create a space shaped by two equally valuable ways of coming to the truth, fact and fantasy. In this space, the ways of knowing of both science and intuition unite to give us, literally, the best of both worlds.

“The actual space of the artist’s studio – the last, twenty-fourth floor of the building and the roof above it, where Leonid Tishkov and other artists stage their artistic performaces – extends beyond the boundaries of its square metric footage and assumes a new visual and conceptual dimension, where the fundamental axes are “sky” and “air.” In this system of coordinates, the rooftop space of Leonid Tishkov’s studio manifests itself in all its mythopoetic glory and is able to model the world as an image of the harmonic ideal, of harmonic perfection. Every individual point on this model of the ideal indicates its own corresponding mode of expression: the roof of “Under the Heavens,” “Aircreatures,” “Pictures of the Wind,” “The Bottom of the Sky,” “The Moon,” “The Stars,” “Angels,” and, finally, “Nikodim,” who is none other than the artist himself.
Leonid Tishkov’s artistic experience encompasses the entire layered spatial structure of the “place” he inhabits, from its lowest and most completely concrete, empirical sense (the external surface of the roof is “the bottom of the sky”) to a sense of its conceptual, metaphysical characteristics (“aircreatures”). As he explores and investigates the immediately surrounding space, Leonid Tishkov gradually realizes that he himself was born out of the space in which he exists, a space where “under the heavens” creates a state of perfect equilibrium between a person and his or her place ‘under the sun,’ and maintains the balance by means of these elements’ mutual dissolution into each other.
The use of four video projectors further concentrates the unity and cyclical nature of Leonid Tishkov’s spatial strategies. They recreate the real, three-dimensional, harmonic world of “Under the Heavens,” while integrating a fourth axis, time. Video technologies materialize the myths of a personal and artistic existence rendered tangible by the ordinary roof of an ordinary building in the south-west district of the City of Moscow.”
- Vitaly Patsiukov, Moscow Art Magazine, Issue 42, 2002.

The exhibit is an all-encompassing installation that recreates the space “under the heavens” of the roof of the studio as a world apart, a separate world that towers high above the megalopolis. Video projection screens seem to extend the exhibit’s physical boundaries and open up windows in the walls of the exhibition hall, which itself houses glowing objects (the moon, a star, the sky) as well as artifacts that testify to art performances. By means of these fantastical combinations, a new poetic reality is created, which we engage in order to “talk with the heavens.”

II.

The Aircreatures
Performance: Moscow, September 2000.
Reconstruction of Aircreatures: Olga Khan and Andery Suzdalev.
Video: Leonid and Sergey Tishkov.
Music: Pablo's Eye.
DVD, 6 minutes 30 seconds.

Aircreatures

the Ocean of Heaven, once full of Creatures, will come to life once more
the season of summer chores to do out in the high field of the sun is coming

the creation of heavenly creatures is one of our chores here in the Kingdom under Heaven
we need to create them in the image of clouds or rainbow-colored spots swimming in your eyes

the artists remind you of retired meteorologists, while
the light Creatures inside the wind and air remind you of the sky’s alveola

now we can see them – there they are, the half-transparent life-forms of the air
just like they were in olden times when there were still no people or trash

the noise of the thin membrane we created sounds like the singing of heavenly cicadas
some people, don’t believe them, will say it’s the continuing din of the evening traffic on the Moscow Ring Road out beyond the buildings

they move easily and noiselessly, the joints of light over our heads
the Aircreatures, they disappear slowly and permanently behind the clouds

-Leonid Tishkov

Aircreatures Book and DVD, edition of 50.
Published by the independent presses Аlcool and Dablus, 2001, Moscow.

III.

Pictures of the Wind
Performance: Moscow, May 1998.
Andrey Suzdalev, Olga Khan, Leonid Tishkov.
Video: Leonid and Sergey Tishkov.
VHS, 6 minutes 40 seconds.

Pictures of the Wind (Картины ветра).
VHS cassette, silkscreen, edition of 15.

The book’s story has its origins on the roof of Leonid Tishkov’s studio. The surface of the roof is a theatre of living art. Pictures of the Wind consists of video documentation of an event that took place in this theatre, on the roof of a 24-story building, and copies of original wind paintings.

the population of the Kingdom Under the Sky goes out to start its seasonal field work
in the spring, it’s the wind that’s stronger than anything else on earth or in heaven
a field of brushes rustles on the roof of the twenty-fourth floor
these artists won’t ever draw anything again
they’re walking around under the sky with their heads uncovered
with weather logbooks and wind socks
they’re foot soldiers carrying out their service in an open space
where the wind is the only commander, impulsive and strong
you can observe the wind without any special instruments
scientists still haven’t learned how to control nature
artists are learning about freedom and beauty from the wind
and also how to toss around big tree branches
how to make waves, to make it hard for pedestrians to walk
this kind of wind is called fresh, strong, and fierce
from seven to fifteen meters a second
and it can also create pictures
we’ll call them pictures by the South-West Movement
of Graphic Art of the Open Space
of the Mountainous Land of Continuous Wind

-Leonid Tishkov, Pictures of the Wind, 1998

IV.

The Bottom of the Sky
Performance: Moscow, June 1999.
Konstantin Skotnikov and Leonid Tishkov.
Video: Leonid Tishkov.
VHS, 4 minutes 00 seconds.

The Bottom of the Sky
One-of-a-kind Artist’s Book: Alcool, Moscow, 1999.
Set of original frottage drawings (graphite on paper), black and white photographs of traces of long-gone aircreatures, video of the sky.
Artists: Konstantin Skotnikov, Leonid Tishkov, Valery Silaev (photos).

This piece includes approximately 100 square meters of frottage drawings of the roof of “Under the Heavens” and a video of the sky. The roof is conceived of as the bottom of the sky, and, like the bed of an ancient lake, it still shows traces of the fantastic aircreatures who lived in the ocean of the sky before the industrial catastrophe.

The Bottom of the Sky
Archeological Research Investigating the Remains of Immaterial Aircreatures

Sinking all the way to the bottom of the Heavenly Ocean, we discover traces of the inhabitants of heaven there, inhabitants who once lived, and still do live, in the space that surrounds us. A cast of the bottom’s surface takes shape as an enormous matrix composed of the remains of heavenly creatures, and other objects of unknown origin, that fell from the sky. A rigorous inspection of the Heavenly Land reflected there gave us reason to conclude that it is an enormous engraved plate that hasn’t yet been used to make a print. To give expression to what we can barely see, to what eludes the casual gaze, that is, to render intelligible the as-yet-unrendered, we are using the technique of sky off-print. This consists of laying paper on the surface of the Bottom of the Sky and then rubbing it with graphite. This technique of frottage, used by surrealists and archeologists, is the one that most adequately serves our purposes. The pictures that arise in this case are not only expressions of the real, existing skeletons of the inhabitants of the Sky who once lived there, they’re also creatures of our subconscious, as yet unacknowledged by us, who are rising up from the depths of the slimy Sea-bottom, waiting to be rendered and fixed in an intelligible form. Here, on the roof of “Under the Heavens,” is precisely where the union of the aetherial, elevated, and airy with the dark, bottom-dwelling, and mysterious occurs, while the paper, like a thin layer of foil, records the occurrence silently and monotonously, taking the frottage-maker’s breath away with the diversity and beauty of this parallel world.

-Leonid Tishkov

V.

Nikodim
Video: Moscow, September 2001.
Concept and cinematography: Leonid Tishkov.
Music: Mikhail Khodarevsky, Dmitry Shumkov.
6 minutes, 00 seconds.

Nikodim is a small rag creature made out of old bits of cloth. He's the artist's alter-ego, in a way: he's gone on several trips with him, to Japan, India, and the Urals, and he's ascended Fujiyama, Annapurna, and Kukan, a mountain Leonid grew up with in the Urals. Once the artist discovered a lake of rainwater on the roof ot his studio and sent his Nikodim off to sea on a journey... Nikodim, permeated with the color of the sky that's been turned upside down in the water, sails in search of wonder, until the drain opens and the whole world suddenly disappears along with the water, leaving Nikodim all by himself on the wet, black roof.

VI.

Sk(y)ier.
Performance: Moscow, February 1999.
Leonid Tishkov.
VHS, 1 minute 30 seconds.

The rooftop of Leonid Tishkov's studio is blanketed with snow all winter, while below, in the city, the snow doesn't last very long. It quickly gets dirty, from all the cars, and melts. The artist goes out skiing far above the city, the way he used to go skiing in the snowy Ural Mountains when he was a child.

VII.

Watermelon Deep-Sea Divers
Performance: Moscow, 2006.
Leonid Tishkov, in collaboration with Dmitry Samsankov.
DVD: 6 minutes.

The film is based on Leonid Tishkov’s graphic stories about the mystical creatures known as Deep-Sea Divers.

VIII.

Private Moon
Performance: Moscow and elsewhere, 2003-2005.
Photographs by Leonid Tishkov & Boris Bendikov.
12 color photos.

From 2003 to 2005, artist Leonid Tishkov and photographer Boris Bendikov collaborated to create a series of images called "My Own Private Moon". This involved taking what looks like an oversized night-light to various places around Russia.
"Private Moon" is a visual poem that tells a story about a man who found the Moon and stayed with her for the rest of his life.In the upper world, in the attic of his house, he saw the Moon, who had fallen from the sky. At first she had been hiding from the Sun in a dark, damp tunnel and was constantly frightened by the passing trains. Then she came to the man’s house, where he found her.Wrapping the Moon in a thick blanket, he gives her autumn apples and drinks tea with her. When she finally recovers he puts her on a boat and carries her across a dark river to a high bank, where moon-lit pine-trees grow.He descends to the lower world wearing his deceased father’s clothes and then returns, illuminating the way with his own private moon.When he transcends the borders between worlds via narrow bridges, sinking into sleep, or taking care of a heavenly body, man turns into a mythological being living in the real world like in a fantastic fairy-tale.
- Leonid Tishkov

A few words about the project “Private Moon”

The project began with an installation at the art festival Klyazma-2003, when I hung a glowing box in the shape of the moon on a pine tree. The installation was called “Day and Night,” and was dedicated to René Magritte. A dark tree with the moon in the background and a not-quite-nighttime sky. So somewhere around eight or nine at night we got the right effect, and it looked basically the same as the famous surrealist picture. When it was dusk, but the sky was still light blue, and at the same time there was the pine tree with the moon in the background in a kind of black aureole.
My project was an attempt to prove whether or not we can take something wonderful from the flat surface of a picture and turn it into something with volume, something real… it turns out that a regular old box that glows and hangs on a tree can suddenly be very poetic, and there’s something in it that you have a deep emotional reaction to. That’s the exact moment when poetry takes the upper hand over irony, defeats it, in a way, when irony becomes meaningless and powerless because it’s not the main component in the image’s construction. The moon is one of the most ancient of the archetypes that live in our archaic memory, at the genetic level. We observed the heavenly lights, the Moon and the Sun, not only when we were people, or amphibians, but even when we were just cells, when our lives were only just beginning. It was the flickering of these two lights, these two powers, that created life on earth. So the strength of this image isn’t even in how we physically manifested it, but in what really exists, and in what we think of when we think about it.
Every subject for me is the manifestation of a poem, the manifestation of a poetic metaphor. Time passes, and you realize that you can’t understand the true value of this world, or even break it down into its component elements or explain it, all you can do is merge with it in living ecstasy, see that it exists and how beautiful it is, and then all irony disappears. That’s why the Moon takes complete control over us when we look at it. The same thing happens to us that happened to Japanese poets 500 years ago, when they looked at the Moon and composed haikus, or that happened to Gogol, when he wrote “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka”[a cycle of stories set in a half-idyllic, half-mysterious Ukrainian countryside]. We all end up turning into eternal creatures whenever we’re interacting with this heavenly body.
And we understand that the Moon isn’t just a piece of some lifeless thing, a piece of rock or something that flies in circles around us. We are attracted by the Moon’s fairy-tale quality, its metaphoric nature, its mythological essence. And we are all participants in this myth, that has both the Moon and humanity in it.
Chesterton once said that a man can no more possess a private religion than he can possess a private sun and moon [G. K. Chesterton, “Introduction to the Book of Job”]. But these days, it’s the exact opposite: yes he can, there is such a thing as that. We are left alone face-to-face with existence, and we’re left all by ourselves with the problem of time, that is, with the problem of life and death, with the problem of loss and gain, with the moon, with the sun, with everything by which and with which we live. Of course, we can turn to someone for support. But still, we’re alone… But we shouldn’t be sad and suffer. That kind of loneliness is just a sign that we exist, that we’re here, that we’re at the center of the world, and that we’re the same size as the Moon, the same size as heavenly bodies.

- Leonid Tishkov

IX.

A Star’s Visit
Performance: Moscow and elsewhere, 2005-2006.
Photographs by Leonid Tishkov & Boris Bendikov.
13 color photographs.

Unannounced, a single star appeared to us, shining alone, cut off from her fellows;
Like an eagle beating the air with its wings,
That’s how the star’s rays moved around it.
When you hear about the star, don’t think that it was one of the ones visible to our eyes;
No, this one was a divine, angelic power, appearing to us in the form of a star.
Can a person, just one of the meek of the earth,
Really touch it without feeling any anxiety?
Your body and soul consist of a starry substance;
If we accept a star into our lives, then our own light starts to burn even brighter,
Uniting with the eternal Light of the Morning Star.
The disintegrated world, sunk in shadow, is gathered back together and made whole by the Light,
The House that was destroyed, once upon a time, on Earth, will be rebuilt as a new, heavenly Home.

- Leonid Tishkov

Translated by Anne O. Fisher

Amokkoma journal oriental #2

2009-05-19T08:39:00.000-07:00

http://www.amokkoma.eu/
http://www.artistresidency.net/

"Needlework" at PROUN gallery

2009-05-18T07:35:00.000-07:00

http://proungallery.ru/ex/future/

http://www.kommersant.ru/doc-y.aspx?DocsID=1168903